I'm not sure if people are aware, but if you have PRACX installed, it adds a bunch of new options to your "Alpha Centauri.ini" file, including this one right down at the bottom:

MoviePlayerCommand=<DEFAULT>

This actually allows you to use a completely different video player instead of "playuv15.exe"!

I decided to try VLC, which can play the .wve files, and after a bit of experimentation, I came up with this:

MoviePlayerCommand="C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe -I dummy --no-video-deco --no-embedded-video --no-video-title-show --video-on-top --no-qt-video-autoresize --play-and-exit"

(Obviously, change the path to wherever you have VLC installed).
This makes VLC play full-screen, with no UI showing, and automatically exit once the video has finished. If you want to skip a video, you have to press ctrl-q instead of esc - there are command line options for changing hotkeys, but I couldn't be bothered figuring them out.

Anyway, hope this info helps some folks!

Hey, this is really great! My only glitch is that it starts in the upper left corner and I have to double-click on it to get fullscreen. Any way around that?

EDIT: Nevermind, found it. -f before the other arguments.