Re:A Notable Improvement would be ditching Totem.. (Score 1)

Alright, I'll bite. I presume you're using totem-xine, as opposed to totem-gstreamer? The first two problems are completely beyond Totem's control, and are problems with the backend library. In my experience, libxine has more such problems than GStreamer, even though it has support for a wider range of codecs. Your fourth point about Totem's "control interface" could be valid, but some suggestions for improvement would be better, rather than just a "that's crap". In summary: file bugs or nothing can be done about it.