I'll clarify - from playing a video in Mplayer, stop the video and exit, then attempt to lock display and keys through the power menu. The result is that the display and keys lock, but the screen stays on - You seem to have hit the nail on the head with your test.

Since I've mainly been playing with the tablet after I close mplayer for a bit anyway I haven't noticed the problem very often.

The spec for the "display blank pause" api call says that it prevents the display from blanking for 1 minute. So if mplayer makes this call right before you close the program (mplayer calls this once a minute, so it depends on timing), then the display won't be blanked for 1 minute. Your issue of it not turning off when you request for it can be fixed. Here's a new version of powered:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/3405/powered

The only change is that a softpoweroff request overrides any request to not blank the display. This means that it's now possible to turn off the screen even if mplayer is running, but that the screen should still not be turned off automatically due to idleness.

Excellent. Thank you!

I've been wrestling with getting Powerlaunch to work for a couple of weeks. I think the problems are 1. I can't find a working libglade2, and 2. powered seems to be broken.

Anyone know where to get libglade2?

You can download libglade2 directly from http://repository.maemo.org/pool/chi...ibg/libglade2/ or add the repository "http://repositiory.maemo.org/ chinook free". By "powered seems to be broken", what is broken?

since instaling the most recent version...8.3 my screen no longer dimms...or goes to standby....how can i correct this

It wasn't until after I realized that powerlaunch was the problem that I had posted the same issue over here, so I'd like to know the answer too . TX

Can you be more specific about the problem? The problem of joepagiii sounds like it never dims. This shouldn't happen. Check that in fact powered is running with "ps -ef | grep powered" and run "powerline softpoweroff" to check that in fact powerlaunch can turn off the display. The issue posted by grog may be different as it sounds like the display does turn off just not properly when on charger.

For Grog, could the "Display stays lit:" option be set to "When charging"? (In Control panel -> Display, that is.)

i checked and unchecked all the settings in the control panel....as for the soft poweroff...no joy....results of "ps -ef | grep powered 807 root 3172> /usr/sbin/powered sw and 3419 user 1892 sw grep powered