[MPlayer-dev-eng] R: Real important features of a Media Player

[Bisiach Paolo]

Hi,
I am trying to build a desktop SVCD/DIVX/DVD player with mplayer/G400 DH.
Since 4 months.
I have encountered many and many problems 'til now.

IMHO, the irrenounceable features that a player MUST have (to compete with a
commercial one, say to be useable every day without particular skill even by
your wife) are:

- Quality.
VGA output is one of the best I ever seen, but it should be possible to put
video output BOTH on VGA and TV out (or alternatively). So you can enjoy
your movie on a plasma/monitor or on TV. And you should not have completely
different video resolution/offset for the 2 outputs, like now happens with
G400. Why have a player wich works so-and-so with 1000 videocards if you can
make one wich is outstanding with one/two of them ?

- Stability.
I was using the 0.60 with mga_vid without any particular problem. My system
used to start from 12Mb of ramdisk image (no hd except for developing)
without problem (anyway, I had to launch mplayer and change resolution
manually, no lum/hue/col tuning, no menu, no audio/video settings on-the-fly
possibility). Since I started with CVS and directfb I have not been able to
watch more than 5 minutes of movie without hanging, slowing and so on. So I
went back to mga_vid.

- Regulations.
  It MUST be possible to tune hue, brightness, contrast, color curves (eg
for plasma connection,     which is very unprecise on dark scenes), to tune
volumes (perhaps with a pink noise generator like in commercials). Try to
compare a PC with WIN98 (damned...)/WinDVD and mplayer: you MUST have
flexibility even in card settings, otherway WIN98 will simply play better
(clearer, sharper, it depends...)
I understand that this is not an mplayer fault, but if the whole thing isn't
just good enough people will use something else to play DVD.

- Usability
  I see tons of msgs/day about transparent subtitles, delay plugins while
the simpler M$ player HAS DVD menus, screen regulations, zooming and
centering.
Personally I   H A T E  M$ and love linux, it's tuneability and stability,
but for the moment IMHO this is the only choice that can compete with a
regular table DVD/SVCD player.

Bye
Paolo