I would like to have VLC as my default video program, but cannot seem to accomplish this task. How do I make this change? Can Dragon Player and Kaffeine be deleted completely with out effecting other task-kde4-extras?

You rightclick a video file
-> go to Properties (I hope I get everything right, I use German localisation)
-> click on the little "wrench icon" on the upper right hand side
-> then pick vlc and use the arrows to put it at the top of the list
-> click ok
...

There you go.

Whether you can remove Dragon Player or not depends on how your distribution has packaged it.

I have moved VLC to the top of all file associations for video content, yet Dragon Player remains the default. Thanks for the suggestions.

Now THAT is strange, since this was the original way of choosing the default to open a specific filetype.

Ofcourse you could just "sudo apt-get purge dragonplayer" in konsole. But that would also take kubuntu-desktop metapackage along.

I just rechecked this on my computer, and switching the positions really should work.
I have:
VLC
Dragon Player
Movie Player
Mplayer

if I switch dragon and vlc it is changed which of them opens.

Close Dragon Player, VLC, and any file managers ( Dolphin / Konqueror ).

In Konsole, run the following command: kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental.
Check to see if your changes persisted and re-apply it if needed.

kbuildsycoda4 --noincremental did the trick. Thanks for the help. Cheers! Wait, spoke too soon, now VLC no longer will play anything.