I found the following workaround: Install mplayer version 1.0-rc2 from two years ago. Does not compile due to errors in ivtv. Disabled it, but compiles, but does not bind. Pulled a patch from the net, applied it, compiles, binds and installs now. Problem with video driver still persists, without any -vo on the command line, the player would freeze the entire machine. But, with -vo gl, the player would now play the DVD stream of interest, but the GUI would crash now. Asked google. Said that adding nomodeset to kernel args would help. It does! Plays DVDs now very well, even with GUI, without freezing. But that version of mplayer does no understand dvdnav://, so need to jump to titles and chapters manually. Last step: Make the GUI quiet with -really-quiet. Uh, what a week-end.
