[packman] where did smplayer2 go?

[Martin Herkt]

> > Yes - so far I know. smplayer now can use MPlayer mplayer2 and mpv as
> > backend, so here is no need to have smplayer2, which was a frontend for
> > mplayer2. Current default is mpv - if not overwritten by an local config
> > file.

As the maintainer of SMPlayer2 (which is now dead and will not be revived) and 
someone who is more or less involved with mpv development, I have to actively 
discourage from using SMPlayer with mpv, and I think it is a really bad move 
to make it the default player backend.

Support for mpv is so bad it actually succeeds in making the experience worse
than with MPlayer. SMPlayer’s developers don’t seem interested in implementing 
it properly (i.e. by using either libmpv or at least the JSON IPC support), so 
I’m afraid this isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

If you do not need a graphical playlist manager, consider using mpv without a 
frontend, as that should cover pretty much everything else with its built-in 
UI and keyboard shortcuts.

> I've been using smplayer with mpv on 13.1 and TW on a 2.67GHZ Core2Duo and
> Radeon PCIe since getting several private and public responses Saturday.
> It's mostly good. Video and sound work well, but with the default skin and
> DVB satellite transport streams I've been playing, dragging the progress
> button usually doesn't have any effect, springing back either to wherever it
> was, or to the start, on release. Only the buttons on either end will
> reliably advance or reverse, and only by tiny increments, which when a large
> position change is wanted, takes a really really long time, a ton of 
> clicking, and a lot of mouse movement to undo when overshoot occurs.

I assume you mean raw MPEG TS dumps. It doesn’t surprise me that seeking 
doesn’t work well with SMPlayer (because it tries to treat mpv like MPlayer), 
but it should work with mpv on its own. Seeking in MPEG TS is hell, though,
so if you are still experiencing trouble, try remuxing the streams to a format 
like Matroska with e.g. ffmpeg or mkvmerge.
If you usually capture these yourself, I can recommend using tvheadend as 
DVR/TV streaming software, as it can do that on the fly and is very easy to 
set up.