well, there are enough distros out there

I'd suggest looking more closely at european (and russian) distros to those who thoroughly
consider making US brain damage sort of more approved/universal being *wrong*.

For one, I use, deploy and participate in ALT Linux which happens to include "real" ffmpeg,
mplayer and the rest of the crop -- with no respect to software patents at all but with full
respect to copyright.

Current desktop release is e.g. here:
http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.altlinux.org/4.0/Desktop...
There's 4.0.3RC which includes English-by-default ISO but hasn't yet been announced as the
final release (so might change):
http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.altlinux.org/4.0/Desktop...

And when you get bored with democracy, welcome to Siberia, there's still enough space for good
people and fresh air too :-)