Few days ago I've built a new gentoo environment: my previous system became a junkyard, so I ended up rebuilding it. First thing I've tested, is how it runs HD.

To mention entire list of updates:
Old system: Linux 2.6.34.8 x86_64 [amd64], nvidia-drivers 260.19.29, libx264 0.0.20101029(portage), mplayer 1.0_rc4_p20100612(--version gives SVN-r30554-4.4.3), vlc 1.1.4.
New system: Linux 2.6.38.4 x86_64 [amd64], nvidia-drivers 260.19.36, libx264 0.0.20110223(portage), mplayer...

I've been a VLC media player user for a long time. But some funny thing happened when I upgraded my gentoo and VLC started lagging extremely hard. I tried everything: from downgrading codec libraries to removing ~/.vlc : nothing helped. The problem was when I was trying to watch DVDs and some avi files, it shown "buffering" on every frame, and, of course, I had a hang of few seconds every time. I've decided to try mplayer, as many people told me it's teh best.
So I emerged mplayer...