Mplayer Revisited 353
Joe Barr writes "It's been two years since I first wrote about Mplayer. Maybe the fury of the developers/community reaction to the fact that I dared to criticize them for their treatment of users kept me away. Whatever. Now Mplayer has a pre1 version of release 1.0 out there and it's time for another look." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
Great for OSX (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great for OSX (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great for OSX (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great for OSX (Score:2, Informative)
Re:or take a look at Xine (Score:3, Insightful)
But for a media player, i found Xine to be better than both. It supports all the formats that mplayer supports, it also has a browser plugin, but it handles DVDs a lot better. In fact, the DVD menus and stuff like that works exactly as with a standalone DVD player.
Actually, it doesn't seem to support all the same formats that mplayer does. For one thing, mplayer uses win32 codecs to play some of the formats it plays. I think they both use liblavac for divx playing, and they both play all of my .avi file
Re:or take a look at Xine (Score:3, Informative)
it doesn't seem to support all the same formats that mplayer does [...] Xine doesn't play .asf files
If you install the Win32 codecs, Xine will happily play all those formats you mention.
I've a few mpg's that mysteriously don't play on xine
I've a few mpg's that not misteriously don't play but on one of the players that i use (xine, VLC, mplayer...) and on none of the other. The "mplayer plays all files that other players won't play" myth is just that: a myth. You will always find files that are not pl
Re:Great for OSX (Score:2)
What about other software? (Score:3, Flamebait)
Perhaps some collaboration between MPlayer and Xine should occur.
However, the fact I find most surprising, is that Microsoft hasn't stepped in argueing that the software cannot be called, "MPlayer". Perhaps it's 1.0 status may spur things on...
Let's hope the MPlayer guys don't ship their next release as version 9.0
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about other software? (Score:2)
All that matters is net output. That's it.
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, spread all resources as thin as possible instead of making one big kick-ass killer app. All in the name of idealist "diversity."
You assume that adding more people to this project will automatically make it a bigger, better "killer app". That is not at all obvious, given what we know about human nature.
All that matters is net output. That's it.
All that matters to *you* is net output. You can hardly fault the developers for not seeing it that way. They are happy to contribute their
Re:What about other software? (Score:4, Insightful)
For one, groups don't always just get along...I really don't think the xine guys and the mplayer guys would like to just drop everything and work together - both sides have thrown a couple of potshots too many - they don't like each other.
Secondly - competition increases output. It's one of those crazy things about life that two competing groups seem to get farther than only one alone.
Third - more people on a project does not (neccesarily) more code make - adding more developers means you have to merge maintainers, and "people in charge" - etc - it has to be very well organized to get O(n) increase in production... You can't just throw people from well-defined, properly working groups together...it doesn't work! Good people can be left out (and unused)...
Fifth - mplayer and xine do share some libs. I'm almost positive that xine is using some of mplayer's win32 code, but i'm not sure - but the logical thing is that they are both open, and why wouldn't one project "borrow" code from another, if it was great. Emulation is the sincerest form of praise - I think that's how that goes.
Mplayer is a great project, xine - last I checked - was...decent. I think seperately you get _more_ output - and thus having two seperate groups is better for you. *shrug*.
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Informative)
the fact I find most surprising, is that Microsoft hasn't stepped in argueing that the software cannot be called, "MPlayer"
Microsoft's product is called "Media Player". MPLAYER.EXE is merely an antiquated, conventional, DOS-format file name.
Re:What about other software? (Score:4, Funny)
actually, it wont. thanks for the clue michael has told us. this version v1.0 is named mplayer revisited. when the next verion comes out v2.0, it'll be called mplayer reloaded. within the same year, v3.0 will be out and named mplayer revolutions. in between each released version, we have v2.5 mplayer reloaded extended DVD edition, and v3.5 being reloaded extended DVD edition.
Dont forget animplayer, the game enter mplayer, the comic book to be released, and the new roleplayer game to be released!
Re:What about other software? (Score:3)
Gasp! There are two media players! Shocking! Seriously tho, what's wrong with that? It gives people choice!!
If there ends up only being one way or program to do anything, then things start to resemble the way Microsoft do things.
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Informative)
Never put all your eggs in one basket.
Barr and bias (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Xine should be installed on systems intended for non-techie end users. Mplayer is not a particularly great choice for non-techies. A'rpi is very much opposed to the idea of binary distributions (since it means that things may run slightly slower on a given system), and Mplayer can support so many things that to set up everything required for full support during a build can take a long time. It's less bad than building GNOME or KDE, but it's definitely not an "rpm -Uvh" either.
That being said, I use mplayer exclusively, and love it to death. It's keyboard controllable, can be used without one of those godawful "fake media player" UIs, is faster than anything else in existence, and has support for just about every interface and codec under the sun (that Open Source folks can get their hands on or reverse engineer). Those of you not familiar with Barr and A'rpi (the lead mplayer developer for a long time) should be aware that the two intensely dislike each other, and have flamed each other for ages. Regardless of how good Barr is in most areas (and this review seems pretty reasonable, saying that "mplayer ain't a great choice for Linux newbies", which is definitely true), keep in mind that he's quite likely to have some bias, as A'rpi does when talking about Barr on the mplayer website. I take both with a big, big grain of salt.
Perhaps some collaboration between MPlayer and Xine should occur.
It does. Of course, it's full of people flaming each other for not giving sufficient credit, but the two projects have shared a *ton* of code in the past, and is the only reason either of them are as good as they are.
Re:What about other software? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you think we should all just go with one software project and kill the other? Which should we kill? Did you know that Xine did the GUI thing first? Mplayer has been the leader in figuring out how to play new formats (especially Quicktime codecs)
So if we had killed xine, would mplayer have developed a gui without competition? If we had killed mplayer, would we still be griping about not being able to watch Sorenson encoded movie trailers?
What future benefits will this competition bring?
To the users, I say: Try them both and stick to the one you like. This doesn't require genius or even much intelligence. If you can't get mplayer working, then xine. If you'd rather not deal with a GUI, then mplayer. (personally, I hate hunting through a list of files for the video I want, when I could just run mplayer -fs filename.avi and get full screen goodness straight from the start without having to move widgets out of the way or get them behind the video window.)
Re:What about other software? (Score:2)
I wholeheartedly agree. choice gives both projects strength...
Thanks for mentioning the -fs thing...why does it seem so simple to do those things when someone else mentions them on slashdot, rather than drudgin through manuals? ah well, my love for linux is continued, as you helped me learn something new today, thus keeping my daily streak alive.
Re:What about other software? (Score:2)
emerge mplayer
Help, I'm confused!!
Re:What about other software? (Score:2)
They all do the same thing in principle. Although, you see ? Software diversity saved my ass :-)
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Insightful)
See? You get a program that does what each one of the seperate programs do best, and only one install routine.
Um, isn't the UNIX philosophy having a bunch of small applications that each only do one thing, and do it really well?
Now.. what if all three groups combined their resources and put the best parts of each into one GOOD program?
YOu say that, but we've already seen this crap in action. How much better has Internet Explorer gotten since Microsoft dominated the web browser? How much better has ou
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I probably didn't make my point clear. Each of these programs use different criteria/algorithms to deal with partition tables. And it was this diversity what saved my ass. If they all got merged, they would settle for ONE path to solve a problem. And this is not necessarily good in general ... and wouldn't have probably saved my ass :-)
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Informative)
Tom.
Re:What about other software? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What about other software? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a world of difference between toothpastes competing in a store and the NECESSARY unification of design required for Linux to ever successfully penetrate the desktop market.
All right, OCG, I'll bite this time. :)
We're not dealing with commercial companies competing with each other, but that doesn't mean we're not dealing with groups competing with each other. MPlayer and Xine are in some pretty heated competition, last I heard. Either one of these projects would love to get a one-up over the ot
Re:What about other software? (Score:2)
The great thing about have two (or more in this case, haven't seen mention og Ogle yet) is that the end user gets to make the final choice about which app they prefer to use.
Of course you were criticised! (Score:4, Funny)
Are you an idiot? The MPlayer programmers were born with this information (which does probably make them about 12, which kinda figures).
Rather than complaining you should be grateful and worshipful that they deigned to come down to this level, and allow us mere mortals access to their holy media player.
Re:Of course you were criticised! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why won't it Play DVD's?"
"I can't watch my DVD"
That's enough to make me cynical.
Re:Of course you were criticised! (Score:2)
If you want to watch other titles on the DVD, use dvd://1, dvd://2, etc.
MPlayer does *not* have DVD navigation support (as xine and ogle do), so if you're a DVD fan and using the DVD browser interface is important to you, you may want to not use mplayer with DVDs.
If you want to use a nondefault audio track and subtitles, you'll need to specify them. I needed -aid and -sid to watch my new copy of Ghost In the Shell in Japanese with English subtitles, rather than the nasty ol' dubbed version
Re:Of course you were criticised! (Score:5, Insightful)
But I cannot say I agree. I find it refreshing that a development team develops a high end program that requires some seriousness of people to use. It is becoming a widespread myth that free software developers are little Tele-tubbie-happy people just sitting on their asses coding for hundreds of idiots that luckilly flock to their mailing lists.
MPlayer is a fantastic program (along with other fantastic media programs running on Linux & Co) so many users want it to work for them. And I think that the MPlayer core team acknowledge that but when you for time number 796 get an email reading 'I problem compiling, Please help!!! Is it bug?' with no log or dump... well the coding gets sour. So I can understand that criticism is difficult to take. Especially when it seems as unfounded as the first review.
Re:Of course you were criticised! (Score:2, Flamebait)
Don't read those messages. Procmail them to
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Of course you were criticised! (Score:3)
In the mplayer documentation, there's a section named users_against_developers.html. In it, Joe Barr is personally attacked. I would never bother filing a bug report on mplayer until I had compiled mplayer by hand and had a 10k example movie file that I had checked against the standards, not with that level of professionalism on the other end.
Why review only the beta version? (Score:5, Informative)
MPlayer 1.0-pre1 has some nice new stuff, but even though it has one thing (support for input from v4l devices with hardware MJPEG support) which I've wanted ofr a long time, the current pre-release is much too flakey for me to use, and I've gone back to 0.92.
MPlayer 1.0-pre1 is for writing bug-reports, not reviews.
Unless Mr. Barr had a conscious or subconscious WISH to find things that didn't work right, i don't see why he wrote his review for the pre1 version.
Re:Why review only the beta version? (Score:2)
And yes, reviewing the full 1.0 would be better, but pre-release versions are supposed to give a good idea of what the release version will look like.
It looks to me that he's found problems that are greater than what bugfixes will help. A prerelease should not have wholesale organizational problems in the software, heck, in my opinion, all the Windows betas I've seen are better than this.
Re:Why review only the beta version? (Score:2)
Yes, Joe wrote a review based on it
Joe liked it and was only disapointed by the install...which I agree, still sucks
Re:Why review only the beta version? (Score:3, Insightful)
And it turns out that he finds it satisfactor
MPlayer has matured... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Warning (Score:2)
Spot on! (Score:4, Insightful)
As for using the software, it works pretty well, and has steadily improved. But I don't build it anymore -- I use the unofficial debian packages, and they work pretty much flawlessly.
Re:Spot on! (Score:5, Funny)
Example: You are having trouble with 'foo'.
Wrong way to ask for help:
You ask - "Could someone please help me get foo working?"
They answer - "STFU n00b!" -or- "Read the FAQ n00b!"
Right Way to ask for help:
You post - "This application sucks. Foo doesn't work worth a damn"
They answer - "Dood! you're probably forgetting to compile with the -Dl337 flag. If that doesn't work email me at progMan@hotmail.com"
Simple enough?
Re:Spot on! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ask a specific question. If you say "Can someone help me to get X working...", you're going to get a "no". Why? Think of what you actually just asked -- you, one of zillions of people, just said "will you commit an unknown amount of time to providing me with support for free".
If you say "When I run foo, I get a 'RTC support not included' error. What can I do to fix this?", and you *checked* the documentation and google first, then you're likely to have a lot more luck, because the other folks can immediately respond with an answer. They just can't *do* anything with a "it doesn't work" post, and most folks are not interested in investing the time require to send out another post with a list of what information is required so that perhaps they can get a response back so that perhaps they can fix a random person's problem. You need to send out a post with enough information to allow the folks you're asking for help to answer your question without immediately needing to ask you for even more information.
This is no different from free support for closed-source software. You'll get the same response on USENET if asking a question about Half-Life. If you're paying someone to sit on the phone and answer questions (like someone at Microsoft with an MSDN support incident, or someone at Red Hat with a commercial support package), *then* things may be different.
It's not just a matter of *insulting* the other person -- you need to include enough information to let them do your request.
Re:Spot on! (Score:3, Informative)
Ask a specific question. If you say "Can someone help me to get X working...", you're going to get a "no". Why? Think of what you actually just asked -- you, one of zillions of people, just said "will you commit an unknown amount of time to providing me with support for free".
While you did an excellent job summarizing the points, Eric S. Raymond wrote an article [catb.org] that I found particularly helpful, and after reading and putting into practice what he was saying (all of which made sense) i started getting a l
Re:Spot on! (Score:2)
I don't get it. I compile/install mplayer often.
Confused.
Matthew
I don't believe you (Score:2)
You only need a few things. MPlayer source. Win32 libs. Put win32 libs in /usr/lib/win32, extract MPlayer source, ./configure && make && make install. There are a couple extra libs you can compile mplayer against but they aren't necessary.
It had some problems on old systems, pre gcc-2.95.3, other than that I have never seen any problems getting it up and running on any distro on any
Don't flame the devs (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't the author understand how the Linux/OSS community works, or what? Its not the devs' job to make shiny installation druids that you can click through. That's what distros are for. If you want to compile software, be prepared to do your homework. If not wait for the
Gimme a break.
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2, Informative)
If they want their software to gain popularity and more widespread usage, they will.
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2)
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2, Insightful)
Idiot lusers who do not know the difference betweeen C and csh scripts should not flame developers since they will invariably make asses of themselves. They can flame the distro makers, who get paid for helping (or at least, the idiot lusers should pay them for the priveledge of flaming them).
Geez, cant everyone just get along?
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2)
A) A lazy one
B) A stupid one
C) A Linux elitist one
D) All of the above
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2, Funny)
Now that evokes an interesting image....
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:5, Insightful)
And then, once you had your nice shiny sources, you could compile it. After, of course, hand editing the Makefile. Oh, and the other one. And, damn, that silly config file. And then you would fix all the compilation problems because it had been developed on a different version of Unix, and used strdup.
But, in those days, men were real men, and hackers were real hackers.
People complained, whinged, sent patches, and things improved.
And then, miracle of miracle, automated configure and build scripts came. There was the perl one, which asked lots of questions that nobody ever knew the answers to. Then there was the GNU configure scripts, which tried out things and found what worked.
And, yea!, verily, time was saved all round the world. Things started to work. Porting to other platforms became simpler. Installation was tamed, and things went were you expected them to.
What I'm trying to get at is: the same argument about "be prepared to do your homework" was used years ago pre-autoconf. Nobody would even think of going back to hand-editing all those Makefiles.
It doesn't take a vast amount of effort to get a sane build and installation process, and the amount of time it saves everyone (including the developers themselves) is massive.
With distros it is less of an issue for mere mortals, but the benefit any open source project will get from being easy to configure and install is that developers who are willing to chase bugs will do so - because it takes no pain to build.
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that a user should expect to be a guru and that the developer has no responsibilities towards the community is part of what prevents the open source community from a
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2, Informative)
Last time I checked, packaging MPlayer had major license problems. I believe at some time it was not even allowed to package according to a clause in the MPlayer license.
But even now there are problems because of all the libraries which are not in the GPL or any other Free Software license. And this is a problem mainly for Debian which has pretty rigid license terms.
Just checked and yes, there are still issues. See http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design6/news.html #debianandsusesux [mplayerhq.hu].
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2)
If you want to say "I'll pay $100 bounty via PayPal to whoever correctly ansers my question first", as you would if you went to Microsoft with a Word or Visual Basic issue and expected support, you're likely to have better luck. If you're paying for support, *then* you can say things like "foo doesn't work, and I'm upset". You aren't, so you can't.
Hell, if you don't have a dedicated support package and you're using a general piece of horizontal ma
Re:Don't flame the devs (Score:2)
Right.
You came up with the idea, you work on it.
I want to be there though when you get the Nobel Prize for the first psychic installation procedure ever.
The author of the article whines that make install didn't produce ~/.mplayer/*
So make install is supposed to psychically know what users are going to run the software? Maybe make a copy in every
A good GUI (Score:3, Informative)
Who is this doofus? (Score:3, Insightful)
A terrible review where he actually admits to not really checking it out fully, but still manages to come to the self-affirming conclusion that he was right all along, and takes the opportunity to take a personal jab at the project.
The only thing I learnt from this article is that the writer is bitter, and lacks tact.
Were the copyright violations fixed? (yet?) (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time I checked was two months ago and MPlayer was still in violation of DivX copyrights. No distro can distribute it as the developer releases it. This is the real problem. This pushes it from Free Software to "cracked warez".
(SuSE, and maybe others, do distribute it but they rip out the illegal code, so it's missing a few codecs. Debian will also be shipping a stripped, legal version soon.)
Ciaran O'Riordan
Re:Were the copyright violations fixed? (yet?) (Score:2, Informative)
MPlayer currently doesn't contain single line owned by DivX networks. None. Nada. (In past, they used opendivx, and while it was under opensource license, it was neither GPL compatible nor free software).
Nowadays, MPlayer uses libavcodec library from ffmpeg project. It it fully LGPL library, you can find it on sourceforge. The reason that SUSE rips it out is simple - some algorithms are patented (please
Ok, I checked, MPlayer does have problems (Score:2)
GPL, section 7:
"If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
I asked a question and gave the basis for my question. The ffmpeg library does infringe a patent. The patent has not been enforced for decoding before, but that doesn't mean it will not be enfo
Re:Were the copyright violations fixed? (yet?) (Score:2)
Or just throw this in your sources list in the mean time:
deb http://marillat.free.fr unstable main
I would imagine Debian would official throw it into non-free or provide some kind of wrapper script to go out and download the codecs in question.
Re:Were the copyright violations fixed? (yet?) (Score:2)
Illegal distribution of Win32 codecs (Score:2, Interesting)
One needs explicit permission from the copyright holder to distribute copyrighted works.
The Mplayer project does not have such permission from Apple, Microsoft and Real.
The codecs are available for free (as in beer) from their respective owners, but the included EULAs do not grant permission to redistribute.
It is obvious why Mplayer has yet to be accepted by Debian. The Mplayer team has no respect for copyright law and continues t
Re:Were the copyright violations fixed? (yet?) (Score:2)
Don't forget movix, the bootable mplayer (Score:3, Informative)
Well it is Open Source.... (Score:2)
mPlayer powers Xbox Media Player and Center (Score:4, Interesting)
difficult my arse. (Score:2)
I downloaded the source, typed
make
su -c "make install"
And I was done.
(I didn't bother downloading any skins or anything posh like that. CLIs are good enough for the likes of me.)
Mind you, that was on Slackware 9. But even so, I think yon reviewer may be taking the piss a bit. Why did he expect a CVS build to work as cleanly as an official one. Isn't the point of a CVS version being available so people can see and help with a work in progres
doh (Score:2)
Re:difficult my arse. (Score:3, Informative)
At first I was a bit scared by all this stuff about installing additional codecs in the documentation, and I even downloaded ffmpeg because I follwed the documentation step by step, but later I found out it applies to the cvs checkout only, is already included in the release tarballs.
The fact is: for most cases, the included ffmpeg and other included
Installation (Score:2)
With all the complains about the GUI setup, you'd think there'd be more people using the completely painless command line version:
mplayer
(file magically works perfectly)
I watch my videos in fullscreen anyway, so GUIs just get in the way. The only thing they seem to add is random seek, which is a useful feature, but not what people s
mplayer's option syntax annoys me (Score:4, Interesting)
Why did they pointlessly violate the established (and useful) double-dash for long options convention in favour of an ugly and irregular one dash for all options? I'm aware that it's probably an imitation of the X standard, but in this day and age that's probably not a good thing to imitate. Also, it doesn't allow you to abbreviate with one-character options.
and this bullshit too: (Score:3, Insightful)
dvd://title#
But this syntax
dvd://title#/chapter#
Doesn't work, you need this:
dvd://title# -chapter chapter#
Which is more typing than: -dvd title# -chapter chapter#
And filters for -vop are applied IN REVERSE ORDER.
How about this malarky:
-vop detc=dr=1:ar=0,denoise3d
commas distribute over colon, colon over equals, except for the first equals that shows a filter has options.
urrggghh...
Oh, and the syntax is horrible just in general. Some options only take effec
Why's it always the assholes who pass the test? (Score:2)
I suspect that it's not coincidence. Building concensus and playing well with others means making compromises. Compromises are the enemy of innovation. It's the people who take their ball and go home who crack the mold. They go off in "unprofitable" directions. Most of them labor in obscurity. A few of them turn out to be right and manage to produce something useful.
mplayer suid ?!?! (Score:3, Informative)
i dunno why he would do that but if it is about RTC then a closer look to mplayer (excelent) documentation would show this:
If you are running kernel 2.4.19pre8 or later you can adjust the maximum RTC frequency for normal users through the
echo 1024 >
Why make it hard? (Score:2)
That's all it takes. I installed yum from FreshRPMs [freshrpms.net], and no configuration was required.
If you issue the following two commands:
then any software you have installed will be kept up-to-date automatically, every night. It doesn't have to be hard to use Linux. Why do people insist on making it appear harder than it is? To frighten noobies?
gstreamer (Score:2)
you define a graph to play your content. You can even describe the graph on the command line
mplayer uses Windows DLLs - yuck.
Just one problem
Don't run SUID root! (Score:4, Informative)
GUI Look (Score:2)
What's best for DVDs? (Score:2)
Re:What's best for DVDs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hard to install? (Score:2)
For those of us wh
Missing links? (Score:3, Informative)
OS X (Score:2)
MPlayer hard to install? (Score:2, Funny)
My own "review" of mplayer/mencoder (Score:3, Interesting)
In short form...
Pros:
Cons:
Maybe a Pro, maybe a Con:
I find it interesting, incidentally, that MPlayer supports Ogg Theora better than XIPH does at the moment, in my opinion....(mplayer actually does play back Ogg Theora files generated by the Theora CVS quite nicely. Now if only Xiph would ever work on Ogg Theora and the Ogg specification again...)
well, give VLC a try (Score:4, Informative)
Re:why (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Windows version? Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32-beta
i use mplayer under windows linux and osX
i like that you can begin to watch a movie
while your downloading it that just rocks
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MPlayer ROCKS! (Score:2)
"Dumb Dumb?"
That's my club name.
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I am a user savvy enough to be running linux. I am bright enough to fix problems. And yet, it was not easy for me to install this application. Therefore, it will be even harder for somebody who is new to Linux."
Your argument:
"What an idiot! He should have read the acoryphal poorly laid out document! Things are easy if you do all the chores perscribed to you by developers with no talent for technical writing and different systems than you!"
My argument:
"RTFM is not a valid complaint. Windows software installs without a manual. It does not expect you to RENAME directories after installing things to get them to work. It does not expect you to KNOW what codecs you want to use and already have them downloaded. It allows somebody to do what they need to do before hacking the source code of the underlying software. Why can't linux software do this as well. Oh right. Because we're better than them."
Re:Here we go again... (Score:2)
Try playing DivX when you lack support, mate. And at least with Mplayer, you'll get a vaguely helpful message -- not with Windows Media Player.
Re:Here we go again... (Score:2)
I'm sorry, you lost me right here. When installing code of dubious legality downloaded from Hungary with a miriad of stolen codecs and swiped protocols that is under furious development from a bunch of cankankerous weirdos, RTFM is certainly a valid complaint.
mplayer is not, and probably never be production quality software. Since (insert distro here) will never package it, it will always suck.
You don't have to RTFM for Windows, but since ther e is no TFM, or source for t
Re:Here we go again... (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows software installs without a manual
It also isn't being installed from source, rarely has anything close to the option flexibility of source-installed software, and is usually completely useless in the event that something fails in the process. I have a copy of VS6 here that bombs near the end of the installer and there's not a damn thing I can do about it, for example. I have shit installed here that won't uninstall properly and, short of removing it manually and hunting down and undoing every l
Re:Here we go again... (Score:2)
This has a bit of Barr bias. Nothing's "wrong" -- Barr's system just doesn't have things like Realplayer installed, so mplayer is saying "I won't be able to play
Re:simple GUI (Score:2)
Maybe you want this skin [mplayerhq.hu]?