Hi there, harryc wrote:

I have installed MPlayer-1.0pre5-2.x86_64.rpm on a vanilla 9.2 install (no patches, no drivers, no updates) and it appears blue. I know of at least one other user with the same complaint. Pictures are here. http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=10339

Any ideas? J Morris was kind enough to work with me yesterday and to point out that mplayer does indeed work on some installations (his for one), but I have found no resolution. I am leaning towards a hardware incompatibility, but not convinced yet. Thanks for your time.

I installed the same version from sources downloaded from mplayerhq.hu and I have the same problem on 9.1 x86_64. On 9.1 x86, compiled from the same sources, I have the normal colours, however. This has been mentioned here before: http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-amd64/2004-Aug/0193.html With a reference to a Gentoo issue that was also sent to an mplayer-developer list but didn't get a reply that I could find: http://zebra.fh-weingarten.de/~maxi/html/mplayer-dev-eng/2004-07/msg00292.ht... So I'd bet on an x86_64 incompatibility in MPlayer rather than a SuSE issue. After all, I don't think pre5 fully supports x86_64. I saw in a pre6 changelog that says it will be fully x86_64 compatible when it's released.

And verily, didst harryc announce to the hordes:

I have installed MPlayer-1.0pre5-2.x86_64.rpm on a vanilla 9.2 install (no patches, no drivers, no updates) and it appears blue. I know of at least one other user with the same complaint. Pictures are here. http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=10339

Any ideas? J Morris was kind enough to work with me yesterday and to point out that mplayer does indeed work on some installations (his for one), but I have found no resolution. I am leaning towards a hardware incompatibility, but not convinced yet. Thanks for your time.

It sounds like a hardware compatibility problem. When you get just "blue" like that, it means mplayer's attempting to use the Xv (direct to video hardware) driver and failing for some reason. One thing I can suggest is you use the different video output method. For the full list type mplayer -vo help, but some of the other ones include gl, gl2, x11, aa (fun for a bit of sillyness using ascii as a display). The Xv is usually the best because, direct-to-video-hardware makes things quicker, but the X11 one should work on any system. (Just may appear a little slower depending on your machine)