Themken: Rats! :-( I wonder why it works so well for me, and I did nothing extra.
Two facts I think might have some relevance:
> I have VLC installed
> I have NO codec packs installed
I just tried out the "Mplayer" fix, and here's what I noticed.
1) THE GOOD - Clear video playback, and audio synced properly to the video.
2) THE BAD - the player is playing it in the original resolution, without any "adjustments." The desired approach would be to have the video "stretched" to a format which modern Windows (and monitors) really are designed to work with... say, 800x600 at the lowest, ideally 1280x1024. Or to put it into a "screen sized" window, with letterbox-style side black boxes, reducing the visual shape to a 4:3 box.
DOSBox does this very nicely, of course, so we all know it's entirely possible.
But... none of this OUGHT to be necessary. The fix is only a partial one, and a better player (which, either by default or by "commandline," corrects for aspect ratio so that videos are never "stretched" to a different aspect ratio) would still be desirable.
HOWEVER... this mainly applies to the opening video, and a small handful of other pre-rendered videos. The in-game cutscenes... which are the MAIN means of communicating story, as far as I can tell... render properly.
It's an annoyance. And I KNOW it's possible to fix, but I just don't have the time, resources, or frankly inclination to reverse-engineer this.
This is something someplace like GOG, which is reselling the game, ought to be able to create a fix for (since this is part of what we're paying for, isn't it?)