I built mplayer along with plug-ins and codecs using slackbuild scripts, and after installing missing libs managed to get mplayer splash and blue skin to come up. But it would crash due to font issues. Rebuilding mplayer and reinstalling solved this problem. I can now view dvds, although there is a warning about mv's not available (after googling this appears to be more of an annoyance than a fatal error but I may be wrong).

My original motivation to use mplayer was to view NASA videos as xine didn't seem to be a solution. Mplayer will load, but after connecting to the nasa server, it would stop. I've checked dependencies using ldd mplayer but things seem normal. I've tried mplayer to use quicktime video and audio in the setup, but no joy. Any suggestions?

NASA posts new videos using M$ Silverlight.

omg...that explains it!

You might be able to use moonlight, but personally I would stay away from this disease called $ilverlight.

This from an organization that mixes English and Metric units in work.

Mono/Moonlight is the bastard child of M$ & Novell. I think I'll pass, I smell something fishy. I don't want M$ code running around on my machine outside of it's VM prison. I barely trust it in there!

NASA going silverlight is disheartening. However, I've got the mv problems resolved.

-removed mplayer-plug-in
-downloaded gnome-mplayer from slackbuilds, built and installed it
-downloaded gecko-mediaplayer from slackbuilds, built and installed it

in that order.