As a nervous user, I am wondering what the effect would be on other packages when installing mplayer, using the package method described in this excellent thread.

I am on Intrepid 8.1

What would happen if Ubuntu released new mplayer package(s)? Do they replace the ones installed by this guide, or are they automatically blocked somehow? If they are blocked, won't this stop the upgrade of other dependent packages? (e.g I use the firefox mplayer plug-in - which mplayer will it use?)

I have managed to compile mplayer (and ffpmeg) inside my home directory and manually substituted the built binaries (mplayer, ffmpeg, ffplay, ffstream) into /usr/bin. This seems to work, but I wonder what the effect is of not also substituting the new .so libraries into /usr/lib.

I guess I can replace the binaries (and libs) in /usr/bin (and /usr/lib) by building using the configure option --prefix=/usr and using "sudo make install" I thought this would cause the least interference with the Ubuntu package system, as no package is changed. But could this break other apps that rely on using older libs? (say OpenMovieEditor?) Clearly if I did this, the changes would be undone by an official package upgrade, but then I could decide if the upgrade was worth keeping. If not, it's simply another "sudo make install" to overwrite the package upgrade.

So, is it safe to build mplayer & ffmpeg using the non-package way (sudo make install) - will it cause problems for other installed apps, and will firefox mplayer plug-in get to work with the new mplayer?

If I use the package method, what are the issues with that?

Golly, so many questions ...