It was found that for most hardware, if the video is set to xv by default it will work OK. This setting also had these benefits.
1. it has higher quality
2. the DVD menus work better.
Some hardware will work better if it is set to X11.
Also, other settings in the Edit -> Preferences can be changed to tweak for support of specific hardware capabilities.
The other issue was what graphic driver was being used and what was it's capabilities.
In the end this was the warning note:
XineDVD program was added as the specific player for DVD movies.Possible Issue: If you have no video in gnome-mplayer please click the play icon on the desktop to open gnome-mplayer, then choose Edit -> Preferences, click the drop-down Video Output menu, and change to x11 (from xv). The video is set to xv by default because 1) it has higher quality, and 2) the DVD menus work better.