Thanks for the reply and advice. Much appreciated. You're right - it's a libpulse0 problem, as (using your workaround to get gxine up and running) setting the driver to alsa solved the problem.
Also, removing the vlc-plugin-pulse package got VLC working. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org