This began a year ago... I have tried lots of players under Linux (mtv, xmps, dvdview, livid/oms, videolan, xine, xanim, avifile, xmmp) but they all have some problem. Mostly with special files or with audio/video sync. Most of them are unable to play both MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and AVI (DivX) files. Many players have image quality or speed problems too. So I've decided to write/modify one...
A'rpi, 2001
mpg12play v0.1-v0.3: Sep 22-25, 2000
The first try, hacked together in a half hour! I've used libmpeg3 from http://www.heroinewarrior.com up to the version 0.3, but there were image quality and speed problems with it.
mpg12play v0.5-v0.87: Sep 28-Oct 20, 2000
MPEG codec replaced with DVDview by Dirk Farin, it was a great stuff, but it was slow and was written in C++ (A'rpi hates C++!!!)
mpg12play v0.9-v0.95pre5: Oct 21-Nov 2, 2000
MPEG codec was libmpeg2 (mpeg2dec) by Aaron Holtzman and Michel Lespinasse. It's great, optimized very fast C code with perfect image quality and 100% MPEG standard conformance.
MPlayer v0.3-v0.9: Nov 18-Dec 4, 2000
It was a pack of two programs: mpg12play v0.95pre6 and my new simple AVI player 'avip' based on avifile's Win32 DLL loader.
MPlayer v0.10: Jan 1, 2001
The MPEG and AVI player in a single binary!
MPlayer v0.11pre series:
Some new developers joined and since 0.11 the MPlayer project is a team-work! Added ASF file support, and OpenDivX (see http://www.projectmayo.com) en/decoding.
MPlayer v0.17a "The IdegCounter" Apr 27, 2001
The release version of the 0.11pre after 4 months of heavy development! Try it, and be amazed! Thousands of new features added... and of course old code was improved too, bugs removed etc.
MPlayer 0.18 "The BugCounter" Jul 9, 2001
2 months since 0.17 and here's a new release.. Completed ASF support, more subtitle formats, introduced libao (similar to libvo but to audio), even more stable than ever, and so on. It's a MUST!
MPlayer 0.50 "The Faszom(C)ounter" Oct 8, 2001
Hmm. Release again. Tons of new features, beta GUI version, bugs fixed, new vo and ao drivers, ported to many systems, including opensource DivX codecs and much more. Try it!
MPlayer 0.60 "The RTFMCounter" Jan 3, 2002
MOV/VIVO/RM/FLI/NUV fileformats support, native CRAM, Cinepak, ADPCM codecs, and support for XAnim's binary codecs; DVD subtitles support, first release of MEncoder, TV grabbing, cache, liba52, countless fixes.
MPlayer 0.90pre10 "The BirthdayCounter" Nov 11, 2002
Although this is not a release, I am going to mention it because it came out 2 years after MPlayer v0.01. Happy birthday, MPlayer!
MPlayer 0.90rc1 "The CodecCounter" Dec 7, 2002
Again not a release, but after adding Sorenson 3 (QuickTime) and Windows Media 9 support, MPlayer is the world's first movie player with support for all known video formats!
MPlayer 0.90 "The CounterCounter" Apr 6, 2003
After more than 1 year, we finally concluded that the code was indeed stable again, and ready to be published as a release. Unfortunately we forgot even to increase the version number, and other annoying bugs went in, so get ready for...
MPlayer 0.91 Aug 13, 2003
The above mentioned and lot of other bugs have been fixed. This is the latest stable version.
MPlayer 1.0pre1 "Development on the beach" Sep 1, 2003
Although this is not a stable release, I am going to mention it because it is the first pre version of the 1.0 series of MPlayer and it is intended to help the big bug hunting party. This is a huge step forward!
MPlayer 1.0 date yet unknown