Alan Dayley wrote:
> What does it take to correctly play AVI files on Red Hat Linux 8.0?
> 
> I downloaded, built and installed the latest avifile 
> (http://avifile.sourceforge.net) but when I go to web sites to play streams, 
> many of the stream links are "http://something.com/somestream.asf" and 
> aviplay reports that it does not support http!  So, I can't play them.
> 
> Is there an clean solution to playing AVI files/streams on Linux?

 From the AVIplay faq (found at the site you linked to):

Q. Can I play ASF files with your player?

A. Yes, but with some important limitations. Stable branch ( 0.5x ) of this 
library includes an ASF parser, taken from VirtualDub 1.3c by Avery Lee. It was 
taken almost verbatim ( I do not even understand how it works :) ). Its author 
does not support his sources any more, because he was forced by Microsoft to 
remove the parser from VirtualDub. They claim that ASF format is patented and 
its open-source parsing is illegal. Patenting a file format is crazy, but I 
suspect that it might possible. Since I am not a lawyer, I've just added these 
sources until MS proves me that I infringe their patents. :)
As I mentioned earlier, I do not understand how it works, and thus cannot answer 
questions about problems playing ASF files.