MPlayer is not your run-of-the mill video player. It's a multi-platform codec-chewing monster truck of a video player for the connoisseur of video players. It has options galore and has the flexibility to play almost anything under the sun.

Typically, I wouldn't recommend MPlayer for new Linux users any more than I'd recommend Vim for folks who just want to edit a few lines of text. It's extremely capable and can be tamed with one of the many GUIs available (MPlayer, that is), but it's got quite a bit of complexity and can be less than user-friendly at times. But for those who are willing to roll up their sleeves and dig in, MPlayer makes a fine video player.

MPlayer is sort of the Swiss Army Chainsaw of media players. It handles a gob of input formats and codecs. It also spits out video to a ridiculous number of devices. Everything from the standard X11 out to support for text mode rendering, drivers for Mac OS X and Windows, and a slew of specific video cards and sound cards as well. In short, if flexibility is your watchword, MPlayer is the tool to choose.

rest here