How to start a video from command line or menu?

[Steve Holmes]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 02:24:50PM -0700, joe at actionline.com wrote:
> mplayer --gui video.wmv ... did not work for me.
> 
> I was able to install xine-ui from synaptic, but it makes terrible noises
> when running (like very loud white-noise).
> 
> mplayer works fine, except it opens a huge terminal window with a log of
> lines of technical info scrolling while the video runs. Is there any way
> to make that terminal window not open (or resize it very small) while
> keeping the video window the main attraction?

On my Arch Linux system, I installed a package called gnome-mplayer
and it works great with audio.  Frankly I never tried any videos with
it so far.  Dunno if that is what gmplayer used to be or if that is
something different.