Sound Player

Just like with everything else in the Open Source world, you have a lot of choice in this area. I chose to use XMMS as a media player because it is very stable and robust. It is also easily scriptable with my favorite language, Python, via the pyxmms module. I don't suggest using the link above to obtain the pyxmms module, rather, use your distros package manager to add the package. The documentation should also be installed with this package and should be accessible at /usr/share/doc/[package-name].

Video Player

I chose to use MPlayer as my video player for pretty much the same reason that made me choose XMMS for audio. With the codec packs that you can get from the MPlayer website, this player handles almost any video format you can throw at it. The only special settings that I have for MPlayer is that in mplayer.conf I have it set to start full screen automatically, and in my window manager (IceWM) preferences (~/.icewm/winoptions), I have it place the MPlayer on the right half of the desktop (the TV) automatically. This means that anytime MPlayer is envoked, it is automatically full screen on the TV.

One Unified Media Player

The choice of XMMS and MPlayer also has another benefit. XMMS has a plugin called XMMPlayer which allows XMMS to play video as well as audio. The means that my scripting code for XMMS already satisfies my need to script the playing of video. I would provide a link to XMMPlayer, but again I suggest using your distro's package manager instead.