Due to a well-documented upstream bug affecting all versions of xine-ui-0.99.4, users with this version will experience scroll lock being turned on at random intervals, which has the effect of halting output to most terminal emulators and switching them to scroll mode. Upstream links: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=8214878&forum_id=40741 http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=12509325 Getting the ebuild from portage cvs and downgrading to 0.99.3-r2 solved the problem, so due to 0.99.4 not containing any critical fixes (sourceforge down for maintenance as of this posting, but release notes available here http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=344940&group_id=9655), replacing 0.99.3 in portage would be benefitial to a large number of users.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 102884 ***