Just sharing a quick thought really. I must admit that I thought it would be a real effort to get AVI files to play in Linux, especially DivX. DVD’s sounded even more unrealistic. To my surprise I discovered two applications that made this job really easy.
Mplayer is a powerful open source media player. Capable of playing a lot of different formats out the box. I installed it using yum from Dag’s repository and it was a snap really. It didn’t take to playing my DivX files, but that was some wierd display error on my test box (still uses a 3Dfx Banshee card).
I then recalled something called XINE and a quick Google revealed that it’s another media player. Took a chance and I saw that Dag had these as well, let yum do the dirty work and of we go.
Two players that can both play DVD’s and a lot of other formats was well. They work well and the quality is great considering my test box is only a 667Mhz box with 256MB memory and a rusty old 3dfx card.
For people looing at plating other formats like RealMedia, get a copy of HelixPlayer from RealMedia. It looks nice, could find a file to test it with though. It comes standard with Fedora Core 3, so just open the package manager and let rip.
