[mythtv-users] mplayer configuration

[Michael Wisniewski]

Hi!

I love the Internal Player, mostly because of the bookmarking ability
and the OSD being uniform and pretty.  But lately, I'm starting to get
annoyed with it because of the inability to play certain filetypes,
such as MKV.

So, I started to use mplayer again, but I was wondering how everybody
else calls it.  Here is my delimma...

My X11 is setup for 640x480 (hd480i with the nvidia config).  I have a
4:3 tv, and if I have it do hd1080i all the time, it puts everything
mythtv-wise in letterbox/16:9 format...which is kind of annoying
because if you're watching SD TV, it puts the lines on the top and
bottom, plus the sides because it's 4:3.

It would be ideal if mplayer can play everything in 1080i, while X11
and myth plays it in hd480i.  I *think* the following command will do
it, but haven't tested it yet.

mplayer -vo cvidix example.avi

This is called from a text console so it doesn't use X11....but I have
a funny feeling that it will either lock or crash the box since I'd be
calling it within X11.  Hope you understand my delimma!

Another thing are subtitles.  I think with mplayer, you have to add
another option to the command line in order for it to display
subtitles.  With the internal player, I believe you just name it to
the same filename but add a .sub at the end and it auto loads them.

My other gripe with mplayer is mapping all the remote commands.  It's
nice to have myth's internal player be able to utilize everything
uniformly.

As far as config's go, I was wondering/hoping if people can share them
to see if it can help me.  It seems like many people here use mplayer
instead of the internal player, and was just trying to get ideas on
how this can work.  Plus, it seems like there are so many options, but
all I want to do is play a video and go.

An idea is maybe have myth pop up a menu with all the mplayer options
and you can just check off the ones you want and play the video.

Thanks in advanced for any help!
Mike