No keyboard response once start mplayer

I've not had this happen before.
Once I start mplayer whether from the 'Watch TV' menu or from 'Watch a
Movie' I have no response to the keyboard.
Xine doesn't play anything but equally the keyboard is ignored
Ctrl-Alt-F1 works so I can get to a tty and stop Freevo, which is the
only way I have found to deal with the problem.

Debian testing
freevo --version
freevo.real-1.9.2 rUnknown
MPlayer 1.1-4.7

Any clues?

Liz

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