MPEG and MP3s are protected by patents, meaning anybody that distributes
software using these patented methods are supposed to be paying royalties.
Red Hat's lawyers, as an american corporation, decided that it would be
far too risky to continue distributing that software for that reason.
(read below before being upset)
Ah, ok, I see.
All of your needs are served by using automatic package management tools
like apt-get or yum and one or more 3rd party repositories. By using
these 3rd party repositories you gain not only automatic download &
install of RH's normal packages and errata updates, but also
hundreds/thousands of additional packages made by community volunteers
specifically to work on that versoin of Red Hat Linux.
Look for xine and mplayer packages in these 3rd party repositories. They
have far more functionality than the almost useless and crippled xine that
used to ship with RH 7.3.
Ah, thank you.
In regards to the rest, well, as my grandfather used to tell me, "they
just make those laws so you've got to break them."
-Charles
