It was a bit tricky for me to get mplayer running properly on my Knoppix 5.0.1 (CD) HD installation. Maybe someone else has similar problems (display errors, no fullscreen, fullscreen isn't hardware accelerated). The reason for this are some missing libraries, which were present in older knoppix-versions (so they had no problems).

So here is a list of the things to do to get it working:

- after HD-installation set up your internet connection
- do an 'apt get update'
- for mplayer on x you need to 'apt-get install libx11-dev'
- for hardware accelerated (!!) fullscreen display you need to 'apt-get install libxv-dev'
- get mplayer 1.0pre8, and one set of codecs
- unpack the codecs into /usr/local/lib/codecs
- unpack the sourcecode, do './configure' 'make' and 'make install' and you've finished!

happy viewing!