Anyone successfully playing H.264 videos?

[skeptic]

Mine is set to the same thing, and has been as that's the last combination I tried before giving up.  I've also tried messing with the deinterlace settings.  Maybe I'll try other settings, sdl or whatever, I've only tried xv and opengl and since neither made any difference I could tell anywhere I  kinda thought maybe none of those settings do anything anywhere.  Even changing from "standard video card" where it was by default to "Geforce or TNT" didn't make any difference I could see.

edit:  can someone tell me what these settings are supposed to do, and what it takes to make them go into effect (reboot, reload router, or just play another video)?  None of the settings, including changing video card, update xorg.conf, and nothing I change, reboot or not, appear to do anything.