SMPlayer, the Ultimate Movie Player

MPlayer Series

1. Installing MinGW on Windows
   
2. Preparing for MPlayer Compilation
   
3. To Compile MPlayer for Windows
   
4. Compiling MPlayer for Linux
   
5. Compiling Mencoder for Windows
   
6. SMPlayer, the Ultimate Movie Player
   
7. Building FAAC, XviD, GPAC and OGMRip
   

There are a good number of programs that allow you to play DVD's and movie files. For me, SMPlayer is a powerful movie player. SMPlayer is in fact just a GUI frontend for MPlayer. I prefer compiling MPlayer by myself and use it with SMPlayer. However, compiling MPlayer may be a daunting task for most people, so I recommend a SMPlayer installer containing precompiled MPlayer binary. I'll write about how to compile MPlayer some day.

*UPDATE* I finally wrote tutorials on compiling MPlayer for Windows. If you're not afraid of compiling programs from sources, read the following posts:

1. Installing MinGW and Code::Blocks on Windows
   
2. Preparing for MPlayer Compilation
   
3. To Compile MPlayer for Windows
   

Setting up SMPlayer

Assuming that you've compiled MPlayer by youself, download the SMPlayer package without MPlayer. The filename is something like smplayer-0.6.6_without_mplayer.7z. Unpack it using 7zip, Tugzip or Peazip, for example, at "C:\Program Files\smplayer-0.6.6". Create a shortcut to smplayer.exe on your desktop and double-click it. When SMPlayer shows up, select Preferences from the Options menu. In the Paths area of the General section, specify the location of your MPlayer executable. Quit and restart SMPlayer. Open Preferences again and choose the Video tab. Select directx (fast) as the video driver. Click the Audio tab and select dsound as the output driver. Click OK. Test SMPlayer by playing a movie.