Trouble with Fedora 8 and proprietary codecs

So you just re-installed Red Hat Fedora with the newest version, Fedora 8. You got a ton of media players to try out, and as a test run you try to play a wmv file. Oops, sorry, it won't work. Because Fedora Red Hat doesn't want to be liable for installing third-party proprietary codecs, which they'd rather the end user do, they tell you that you can get the codec at $16.99 at some site. (This is what CodecBuddy does.) The link tells you that using open-source formats is better. But you have a whole hard drive full of music in mp3 and video in wma and wmv format. What are you supposed to do?
There is a solution I found. Get MPlayer in the "add-remove software" option in the top Applications menu, or from the MPlayer website. Then, go to this Fedora 8 Installation Guide. Scroll down to Media players and follow the instructions, then scroll down a bit more to the binary codecs. Installation is a snap when you follow the instructions on the help guide. For ease-of-use (unless you know you have a 64-bit machine) just use the link to the tar provided. Configure the preferences to use pulse, and you can watch that wmv video in style!

Update: MPlayer may not play flac format music files.

(tags: Fedora wmv, Fedora 8 wmv, Fedora 8 wmv player, Fedora codecs, wmv Fedora 8)