Half wondering (and half I had a problem with a website)

what is the difference between mplayerplug-in (present in the /extra/ repository ) and the gecko-mediaplayer (I found it on slackbuilds)?

From what I see in the description, the latter is a replacement of the former, but both seems relatively "old" packages. If this is true, is there a reason for Pat to offer the "oldest" one?


Long story version: http://www.rai.tv allow italians to see the streaming of the national television channels. It needs the silverlight plugin (on windows / mac). Using firefox and the last moonlight plugin I can see the videos, but my cpu go at 100%. I found a greasemonkey script to modify the page to offer the mp4 directly, and I installed the mplayerplug-in from the extra repository to handle the new format. Unfortunately, for some reason, the plugin has some graphical glitch for the positioning of the buttons and, worse, it hangs up the video after 5-10 seconds of streaming. Removing the mplayerplug-in and installing the gecko-mediaplayer did the trick.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a little frustrated by the trial-and-error method, but notwistanding... while the package is on extra, does it offer something better than the gecko-mediaplayer? Am I missing something?

(on slackware64-current)

you might be interested in the Rai Smooth Firefox plugin:

https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/raismth/

"Due sono essenzialmente i requisiti richiesti per un completo e corretto funzionamento dell'estensione:
mplayer [www.mplayerhq.hu] : richiesto per la visualizzazione dei flussi trasmessi mediante Smooth Streaming
faad [http://www.audiocoding.com] : richiesto per la decodifica dell'audio aac"

The requirements are mplayer and faad only.

Indeed both applications are developed by the same man: Kevin DeKorte. MPlayer-plugin certainly is no longer developed but the gecko mediaplayer is well worth installing with a release on October 2012 (1.0.7) which I notice has not been followed on SBo. A simple version bump to the script would probably be enough though... Edit: Version bump for gmtk required as well...

Perhaps PV would be interested in changing the package in /extra?

I am curious to test that link from my tiny Android tablet. As RAI is funded by the Italian taxpayer you would expect they would offer their content in some sort of free technology not some proprietary cr@p.

I have often used gecko-mediaplayer/gmtk/gnome-mplayer however recently I have reverted to mplayerplug-in. The reason is that I use an app on my droid called "Airdroid" which allows full access to the droid over the LAN wirelessly through any browser. I can play a video from the phone with mplayerplug-in but not with gecko-mediaplayer. I guess I should let Kevin DeKorte know. Plus, mplayerplug-in is already there in extra. I guess PV finds it works well for him too. (FWIW)

I have tested it from my tiny Gingerbread mobile and videos display properly without any plugins.