SMplayer 14 (latest)/SMTube on Pentium III - not usable

[redxii]

I made this Windows build specifying to optimize for pentium 3 but I don't expect it to make a tangible difference, doesn't hurt to try: http://sourceforge.net/projects/smplaye ... p/download

[sindi]

The Pentium 3 mplayer.exe works fine (tested on the DELL 8100). Both it and the standard player play Youtube at 480p flv or webm on the 8100, the C400 (which is now running at its expected 866MHz) and also a Thinkpad T23 1.13GHz (also Pentium III). At 720p the sound and video go out of synch.

I have a Gateway 2000 166MHz laptop with a vol dial, line in and out, and excellent sound in Win98, but the opl3sa2 ISA sound won't work in any linux I tried (OSS or ALSA). Is there an mplayer binary for Win98 or DOS (on a Pentium II)? I have set up other old laptops (including 120MHz P54C for which I compiled mplayer myself) in linux with mplayer as internet radios, using scripts to access 75 classical stations. Or with wget and mpg123.

[sindi]

The P3 mplayer does not appear to work in Win98SE. :The MPLAYER.EXE file is linked to missing export KERNEL32.DLL: AddVectoredExceptionHandler. There is a kernel32.dll in C:\Windows\SYSTEM.

I found Windows versions of wget and mpg123. I can download an mp3 and then play it, but not pipe from one to the other as I can in linux.
wget -O - http://url-of-mp3 | mpg123 -

I should ask for help at the mpg123 or mplayer forum, not here. SMplayer/SMtube are working perfectly in XP. Thanks again.

[redxii]

Support for 9x or even Win 2000 has passed a long long time ago, needs at least XP.

[marcelo-ar]

[sindi]

I downloaded the older mplayer (from 2007), since I know the 1999 version works with streaming mp3.
I downloaded version 9.20 of 7-zip from the 7-zip site and unpacked the mplayer*.7z file.

I downloaded (all of this with linux since Opera 9.64 and IE are too old) also KernelEx and installed it.
It asked me to install Microsoft Layer for unicode which I did not.

mplayer still crashes with 'illegal operation'. Do these versions of mplayer actually support a 166MHz Pentium (P54C?).
I had to compile specially for it to use with linux on this laptop. Or is unicode really needed?

With KernelEx installed, I will try Opera 10.10 or later again. It would not install despite being the 'last version for Win98' so may require newer hardware. I discovered that failed attempts to install it were stored permanently in /temp and I was able to free up about 200MB (on this 2GB drive with DOS, WIn98 and two linuxes filling it).

Someone suggested mpxplay (DOS version) for streaming mp3. Version 1.60 beta 2 or later is supposed to but does not stream mp3s for me, directly or piped from wget via STDOUT.

Nor does mpg123 for Windows though it does stream in linux. Not on this laptop since no sound in linux.

I can try making an html file to use with Opera 9.84 as home page with links to the actual mp3 (or pls etc) files of radio stations that work with mplayer in linux. Most of the stations cannot be accessed with this Opera via links on the home page.

[sindi]

Opera cannot directly access and play with WMP the links which work with mplayer.
WMP 7 (which says it cannot upgrade itself) cannot handle most of the radio station links.

At a site discussing what still works with Win98 I found Winamp 5.3.5 suggested and it installed and despite an occasional 'illegal operation' at other sites, it played several m3u and pls links at http://www.internet-radio.com/stations/classical

Seems to be associated with Shoutcast. All stations available in four formats.

Neither WMP nor Winamp handle Realplayer format RAM, or FLA.

So far everything works. Ancient FM, Otto's Baroque (rather poor quality).
The 187 classical stations include Groove, classical Indian music (Ravinder Singh), and Rock Classics.


I had to cut the volume to one tenth at times. Amazing speakers.
Runs hot. I tried turning off the video (Fn-F3 to switch to CRT) and the sound stopped.
I can exit Opera and keep playing. And then save station to a playlist. Mission accomplished.

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions for getting mplayer to work but I think I would need to compile it for older hardware.


This laptop is really too slow to play videos.

[sindi]

I just got smplayer/smtube working in Puppy Linux Tahr (latest version) on the DELL inspiron 8100 1GHz Pentium III as follows:

(some of the details of extracting may be inaccurate)

Install SMPlayer 4.9 (not quite the latest version) using Puppy's quick installer Quickpet.

Download a puppy package Qt4-4.8.0.pet and extract the files with tar -zxvf.

The SMTube 15.15.17 pet for puppy refused to install, so I downloaded one from smtube website, a deb.
To unpack the deb I copied over ar and a required library from another linux (basiclinux, busybox version). ar -x filename.deb
It gave me a data.tar.lzma
I used unlzma (I forget the details how) to extract data.tar
tar -xvf data.tar produced the files

I found in bin the file smtube, and ldd revealed that it needs libphonon.so.4, which I found in the qt extracted files and copied cp -a libphonon.* to /usr/lib. The smplayer package appears to provide all other required libraries for tahr-based puppy linux.
The other files in the smtube package are not necessary (icons for desktop etc, translations). Since I did not install the package there is no
automatically made menu entry. In an rxvt I type smtube, or smtube -v, to get the screen asking me what I want to watch (with the -v I don't get all those unwanted suggestions).

I can then play Youtube videos as in XP. 720p default, which I can change in Preferences, Performance to 360p.

I toggled fullscreen with F and can no longer go back to the 1/4 screen SMplayer format. f only toggles between controls and no controls. Same problem on the 1.13GHz T23 (except there f toggles many different sizes/shapes of rectangle and the top and bottom of the image are missing and if I try to move forward in the video it goes into an endless loop of sound).

I played a few seconds then stopped the first video, which played with sound out of sync at 720p. I adjusted it down to 480p and started the video again and there is no sound. Mplayer plays internet radio, Youtube plays sound in a browser, but SMplayer is now totally silent. 480p worked with sound on this same laptop with smtube/smplayer in MicroXP.

How do I get the sound back? I have tried exiting and restarting smplayer but would prefer not to reinstall it or smtube. Sound is turned up full in linux and in smplayer itself.

First I attempted minitube and got lost in the instructions and dependencies (choice of several phonon-backends.....). At some point I think I got a segfault or some other error message.

I am hoping to replace gtk-youtube-viewer, that worked beautifully before Youtube's changes in April, even on a 500MHz laptop at 360p. I gave a bunch of 266-900MHz laptops to the 10 year old neighbor to share with his friends for email and youtube. Tahr claims to want 768MB RAM but is fine with 512MB if you avoid Firefox and Chrome. The older laptops have 160-384MB. We got youtube-dl working with mplayer but it is a nuisance to search for videos with a search engine then type (or even copy) the URLs to use with youtube-dl and then switch to another terminal to start mplayer playing as it downloads. Beyond the attention span of many 10 year olds.

[sindi]

smtube works perfectly with mplayer, on my Inspiron 8100 1.0GHz Pentium III. With three versions of puppy linux (lupu precise tahr)
(Copy smtube to /usr/bin, add the location of the relevant libraries to library path in /etc/profile).

With smplayer it loses sound after the first use unless I delete /root/.config/smplayer/smplayer.ini. I commented in another discussion on sound.

On a 1.13GHz Pentium III Thinkpad T23, mplayer works, smtube can list relevant videos, but when I click on a title nothing happens.
I can play Youtube using Opera browser (24-bit color, required, and works only at low resolution, not quite in sync). I tried three versions of Puppy Linux. (wary lupu slacko). Intel sound. I had to unmute it with a mixer. The video is messed up in slacko (can't display some images, if I switch to vt2 then X no longer displays usable and I have to reboot). Smtube won't work in wary or lupu where everything else works well.

Any suggestions other than using smtube/smplayer in XP, where it displays badly, sound loops when I fast forward, and things crash?

I can use youtube-dl with the URL from smtube to start a download that I then play with mplayer as it downloads. Not suitable for use by kids.

[sindi]

Smtube works properly with mplayer if I add /usr/local/etc/ssl, which I thought was only needed for smplayer. Mplayer used with youtube-dl does not need it. I figured it out from reading something about ssl handshake in the rxvt on exit from smtube.

480p, sound in sync, controls work as designed (f, PgUp, q etc.) unlike SMplayer. Victory! (Except with SMplayer)

I asked for help with sound in another discussion topic.