As a special service for Ubuntu users, the mplayer project now provides packages for various versions of Ubuntu. The packages are built twice a week from SVN trunk and run independently of your system libraries. Read the announce
Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid and higher now can install mplayer and x264 video encoder and keep updated easily by following method:
Open up a terminal window under Applications -> Acessories -> Terminal, and then type in following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:motumedia/mplayer-daily sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mplayer
Enjoy!