[Techtalk] decompressing tar.bz2 files

[ed orphan]

After downloading a file like
rp9codecs-20040626.tar.bz2 from the MPlayer
site I can't get it to decompress into something useful.
bzip2 -d rp9codecs-20040626.tar.bz2 results
in a tar file that never untars.
tar -vxj rp9codecs-20040626.tar.bz2  does
nothing at all. 
tar -x rp9codecs-20040626.tar  does nothing.
It just hangs.  Same with a tar -t command.
  I've tried several codec files from the MPlayer
site that are  tar.bz2 files and they all behave
the same.
  Can anyone tell me how to decompress these
   tar.bz2 files?