thanks for the help!
i have since figured out that i need to use -loop 0 for infinite looping playback, and that playlist can be a simple text file with one file per line
i am finding it difficult to find comprehensive command line options for mplayer
the official documentation
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/commandline.html gives very little (for example, i had to google that "0" was necessary for infinite looping)
a google for -ao or -vo returns practically nothing. how exactly do i specify which output to use? is it a 1, 2, 3 number system?
edit: ok i found -ao help. i'm not sure that does exactly what i want. i'll have to test when i get back to the computer in question (the computer i'm on right now only has 1 sound card), but i basically have a computer that has two sound cards, and i want to specify which sound card to use. -ao seems to specify the TYPE of audio output, not the audio DEVICE. am i wrong? or will the various sound cards show up as dsound1 and dsound2?
i also need to specify which of two screens the video playback should start on, edit again: oh wait, i guess i'm dumb, video output should = screen output. though again I'm not sure how exactly that will show up. i guess i will have to run -vo help when i am at that computer. specifically, i will have one screen hooked up to VGA and one screen hooked up to HDMI (on the SAME video card), but I will want to specify output to the HDMI port
is there any comprehensive command line list? edit again: ugh i am blind. i should have been looking at the MAN page. nevermind