MPlayer leaps to version 1.1

After almost ten years of being stuck at 1.0pre and 1.0rc versions, the MPlayer developers have decided to skip the 1.0 release and move straight on to MPlayer 1.1 which has now been released. The latest version of the open source media player framework adds several improvements and introduces compatibility with the latest release of FFmpeg.

MPlayer 1.1 includes the beginnings of OpenGL ES support for embedded use and improved handling of network problems and dropped connections. It also supports more subtitle types, such as the formats used for Blu-ray disks and DVB close captioning.

As part of code cleaning efforts, MPlayer's internal, forked versions of libfaad2 and mp3lib have been disabled. MPlayer 1.1 is now using FFmpeg's codecs to interact with MP3 and AAC audio streams. The developers point out that support for the old internal systems will go away in the future and that users should not rely on these. Other improvements in the new version include experimental support for binary QuickTime codecs and the ability to add noise to the video output.

At the time of writing, the developers have not posted a full changelog or release notes for MPlayer 1.1, but binaries of the media player package for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and its source code can be downloaded from the project's web site. MPlayer is released under the GPLv2.

(fab)