Firstly, why should you use Mplayer with hardware accelerated video decoding? Check out this video (look at the CPU usage for the same video when played with and without vdpau) I've just recorded:.

video

Sometimes when you watch a move, the sound is just too low, even setting your alsamixer to 100%. But you can increase your MPlayer soft volume to 300% with just a simple command.

SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer (video player), from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more.

Mplayer is one of most known movie players in Linux, and also in Mac OS, and Windows. To install it in Debian / Ubuntu run:

            sudo aptitude install mplayer

Mplayer has lots of options, and we will explore some of them here, the files format it can play according to its official site are:

Most streaming audio and video on the Internet is disseminated in proprietary formats such as RM, RAM, WMV, and ASF. Fortunately, the open source application MPlayer can play and even record streams in almost any format.

MPlayer is a movie and animation player that supports a wide range of codecs and file formats. It also has a plugin for Firefox allowing you to view streaming video from your web browser. This short howto will help you get it up and running in no time.