Also, if you have trouble with VLC here are some pretty straightforward instructions to install Mplayer, which essentially does the same thing.
This walkthrough was not written by me so the help that I can provide is limited. I DID get it to work on my system so I can verify that it does work.
STEP 1: Download mplayer and essential codecs, save them (do not unpack them) in Desktop or other folder under root
Under the main program, download: MPlayer-1.0rc1.tar.bz2
Under the Codecs download: essential-ppc-20061022.tar.bz2
Under Skins download: Blue-1.7.tar.bz2
STEP 2: open a terminal / shell session, first unpack and compile mplayer - copy paste all below to the terminal window
cd `find /root -iregex .*mplayer[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -i ".tar."`
cd `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."`
./configure --enable-gui
STEP 3: copy paste all below to the terminal window (this will take awhile as it compile the source files)
make
make install
STEP 4: this will unpack and move codec to /usr/local/lib/codecs
cd `find /root -iregex .*essential[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i essential | grep -i ".tar."`
mv `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."` /usr/local/lib/codecs
STEP 5: unpack Blue-1.7.tar.bz2 and copy to /usr/local/share/mplayer/skin/default (you may need to create "default" folder)
STEP 6: type mplayer <filename> or gmplayer (gui version)