debian console and multimedia

[Jude DaShiell]

what should be possible to play from the console with debian in terms of 
multimedia?  totem so far as I know still is on the sysstem I'm using and 
earlier attempts to use m-player failed completely because of a missing 
avisynth.dll file.  This not only failed on a couple streams on the web 
but also on playing a dvd.  I probably had every other codec for mplayer 
than avisynth.dll but that one killed it.  I don't care about the 
pictures, but do need the sound.