How to play VCD .dat files using mplayer

Mplayer is a versatile piece of GNU/GPLed video/audio software which supports an astronishing variety of audio and video formats. In the previous post, I had explained how to convert a VCD to MP3 format. Here is another tip to help one use mplayer to play a VCD file. As you know a VCD has video files by names avesqrt.dat . To play such files in linux (provided you have mplayer) , do the following :

$ mplayer   vcd://1

If that doesn't work then specify your cdrom (In my case it is /dev/cdrom but it may be different in your case) device as follows:

$ mplayer   -cdrom-device   /dev/cdrom   vcd://1

Note: You should not mount the cdrom for this to work.

To play a DVD

$ mplayer dvd://[title  [start_title]-end_title] [options]

To see a TV channel (Provided you have a TV tuner card)

$ mplayer tv://[channel] [options]