I'm one of those early-adopter 770 owners who thought they'd get under the hood of linux as a by-product of purchase but has actually done little more than try out a few x-term commands.

Having just looked at the MPlayer website and become thoroughly disillusioned with the prospect of downloading and implementing not only the prog but codecs, skins and even fonts, can someone give me a striaghtfoward breakdown of exactly WHAT I need to download and HOW I get it up and running?

no probs if that's not how it works, I'm fully aware that for many a big part of 770 ownership is the metaphorical "getting your hands dirty" aspect of code digging.