Sometimes .mov files get downloaded with podcasts. I downloaded mplayer-nogui and couldn't get that to do anything but error out. Get this, a nogui application that still wants to open fb0 and use X. Since I didn't get X configured enough it would work with any accessibility software on Debian it certainly wasn't configured well enough to support mplayer-nogui. So when I downloaded mplayer-gui I remember I had used apt-cache search search-string | less to search for similar packages and vlc was also listed. For that reason I installed both. Now I don't know if mplayer-nogui will work on this system with some arcane combination of options, but I do know typing vlc file.mov was all that was necessary to play a movie file and actually hear something other than bitching about my X-display and lirc and joystick equipment would not work.
