This version brings two new features:

Media info in the OSD

There’s the new option ‘Show info on OSD’ in View -> OSD (shortcut Shift + I). It displays info about the current media (resolution, bitrate…) on the OSD.

Press “Shift + I” (or just “I”) to turn it off.

New configuration options for the playlist

There are available more options in Preferences -> Playlist to better control the behaviour of the playlist. Some of the new options will allow the playlist to be more suitable to store bookmarks (turn off the options “start playback after loading the playlist” and “play next file automatically”). The current favourites menu in SMPlayer is not designed to handle many items, however the playlist can support without problem hundreds and even thousands of items, so I think for bookmarks with a lot of items it’s better to use the playlist.

Another change in the playlist, now the load/save buttons are grouped together in a popup menu.

This version has the following main changes:

Send audio to device

In version 16.6 one featured option was the possibility to send the video to an external screen. Now, in version 16.9 there’s the new option to send the audio to the specified audio device. It can be useful to send the audio to a TV via a HDMI cable or a bluetooth device.

Improvements on the playlist

Now it’s possible to hide any column (right click to see the options). The search field is also hidden by default, a new search button shows/hides it. These changes are intended to prevent the playlist window to be too wide.

Returning to Qt 4 on Linux

Since version 16.6 SMPlayer is built with Qt 5 by default. However many linux users complained about some problems with Qt 5.These are some of them:

• the numeric keypad keys won’t work as shortcuts
• Qt 5 uses its own file open dialog instead of the native one
• the systray icon is not displayed in the systray but in the top left corner of the screen

So I think for the moment it’s better to return to Qt 4 until Qt 5 had those issues fixed. For that reason now the Ubuntu packages are compiled with Qt 4 again.

La versión 16.8 de SMPlayer trae varias mejoras en la lista de reproducción. Una de ellas es que ahora es posible descargar una lista desde una URL. Además hemos creado, a modo de ejemplo, una lista con muchos de los canales TDT españoles. En este artículo se explica cómo cargar esa lista.

Para ello hay que abrir la lista de reproducción (en el menú Ver). Después hay que hacer clic en el botón de “abrir URL”:

En la nueva ventana tecleamos esta URL: http://tonvid.com/onlinetv.php

Esperamos unos segundos y se descargará una lista con varios canales online:

Para ver cualquier canal sólo hay que hacer doble clic sobre él.

Unas notas:

• No todos los canales emiten las 24h del día por lo que es posible que al tratar de ver alguno dé error.
• Los enlaces de Mediaset (Telecinco, Cuatro, etc.) caducan a los pocos minutos. Si al tratar de ver uno de esos canales da error, vuelve a recargar la lista para que se actualicen los enlaces. Además cuando alguno de los canales de mediaset no emite online, el canal no aparecerá en la lista.
• Los canales incluyen en el nombre una serie de etiquetas (ES, SPORT, etc) para hacer más fácil la búsqueda en la lista. Si no te gusta que aparezcan esas etiquetas, usa esta URL para cargar la lista: http://tonvid.com/onlinetv.php?tags=0

Actualización: la URL de la lista es ahora http://tonvid.com/onlinetv.php en lugar de http://smplayer.info/onlinetv.php

In the new version 16.8 the playlist has finally been improved.

Now it’s possible to sort by any column.There’s also a new column, which displays the path of the file (or URL). The good thing is this allows you to sort the list by folder name.

It’s also possible to search in the playlist. When you type something in the search field the playlist will display only the items that match the search string. Notice that the search is performed in all columns.

And finally there’s a new option to load a playlist from internet. This will download the playlist from the URL you enter. As example you can enter this URL: http://tonvid.com/onlinetv.php. This URL provides a playlist with some online TV streams.

The playlist includes some music channels and some online TV channels from Spain. Notice that the Spanish channels may be geolocated and thus they may only play within Spain.

Update: the URL of the playlist is now http://tonvid.com/onlinetv.php instead of http://smplayer.info/onlinetv.php

Since version 16.6 the SMPlayer packages are built with Qt 5 by default.

However some users don’t like Qt 5 (for example the file open dialog is different) or there are bugs (for example in some versions of Qt 5 the numeric keypad keys don’t work as accelerators). For that reason now there’s available another PPA for Ubuntu with packages compiled with Qt 4.

https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/ubuntu/smplayer-qt4

To install packages from that PPA, first remove the normal PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:rvm/smplayer

Add the new one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer-qt4

Update and install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smplayer smplayer-themes smplayer-skins

The upcoming version will have new interesting features and you can test it now. Links at the bottom of the page.

Some of the features require Qt 5. The Windows version has been built with Qt 5.6.

Support for high DPI screens.

On these screens SMPlayer (and many other applications) looked very tiny. In the new version the interface is scaled so it looks good.
This feature requires at least Qt 5.4.

Support for 2 in 1 computers with touch screen.

SMPlayer includes now a “tablet mode” (available in the Options menu). When the option is turned on it makes some changes in the GUI so that it would be easy to control SMPlayer by touching the screen.

• the font size and buttons are increased
• some of the options in the menus are hidden
• sliding vertically in the video changes the volume, sliding horizontally seeks in the video
• tapping while in fullscreen displays the floating control

When the user changes the tablet mode in the Windows action center, SMPlayer will detect it and ask if it should switch to the SMPlayer’s tablet mode as well.

This feature has only been tested on Windows 10, however I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work on Linux as well.

Support for dual screen

Now it’s possible to send the video to a second screen connected to the computer, while controlling the application in the computer’s screen.

Note: the desktop must be configured as “extended”.

There’s a new option in the Video menu: send video to screen. It shows a submenu with all detected screens.
One of the screens is labeled as “primary screen”, which is the computer’s screen. If you send the video to another screen the video will be displayed on that screen in fullscreen mode. The SMPlayer interface will remain in the computer’s screen (it won’t display the video) where you can control the video (seek, change volume, subtitles, playlist, open another video…) while the video is displayed on the second screen. If you send the video to the primary screen the video will be re-attached to the SMPlayer window.

This option has only been tested on Windows 10.

Global shortcuts

Now it’s possible to use the media keys (play/pause, stop, volume+/-, etc.) as global shortcuts. That means that those keys will work even when SMPlayer is in the background. You can activate this option in Preferences -> Keyboard and mouse.
This option requires Qt 5.

Settings are remembered for online streams too

This means that for example you can add bookmarks to YouTube videos or other online streams (as long as they are seekable).

Testers for these new features are very welcome. If you find any problem, please let me know.

Download:

Version for Windows:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/smplayer/files/Unstable/

Packages for Ubuntu (smplayer r7834):
https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/ubuntu/testing/+packages
(the package for Ubuntu precise is built with Qt 4)

Packages for Debian 8, Fedora and OpenSUSE (smplayer r7864):
https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Asmplayerdev%3Atests&package=smplayer