Granted, if you don't know the actual steps, I can see the frustration. But the same would be true of any new OS. It's not a failing of Fedora. I had mpg/flv/mp3 support on my F15 laptop within 5 minutes of the install.
I remember having to execute more than a couple commands to get the codecs I wanted.
Post up your two commands to download the repository and install the codecs and I’ll give it a shot. I’ll install Fedora 15 in a VM right quick so we can start with a clean install.