Desktop Guide suggests Gxine for a default video player

[Phil Bull]

Hi again Ari,

On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 10:53 +0300, Ari Torhamo wrote:
> Do you mean that other applications that use the gstreamer backend rely
> on totem-gstreamer for automatic codec installation? This sounds a
> little strange, but then again I'm not an expert. Keeping
> totem-gstreamer just for the codecs that are only used by itself would
> ofcourse be useless :-)

No, nothing relies on totem-gstreamer for doing the automatic codec
installation. It's just that, as far as I'm aware, automatic codec
installation only works with the GStreamer backend and not xine. Of
course, I might be wrong about this, so please feel free to correct me.

I'll try to summarise the concerns which led me to recommend gxine:

 * totem-gstreamer cannot play DVDs, but most users would probably like
to play DVDs with a nice user interface.
 * The xine backend supports DVD playback, so using a xine frontend like
totem-xine or gxine would be a good idea.
 * totem-xine conflicts with totem-gstreamer, so only one could be
installed at any one time.
 * totem-gstreamer has some nice features which totem-xine doesn't have,
such as automatic codec installation. For example, playing WMV files is
a lot easier with totem-gstreamer.
 * gxine *can* be installed at the same time as totem-gstreamer, so
users get to keep all of the nice totem-gstreamer features while being
able to play DVDs through gxine as well.

That's why I chose gxine instead of totem-xine: the user is able to play
DVDs while still having all of the advantages of the default
totem-gstreamer. Otherwise, you lose the nice automatic codec
installation feature.

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
http://www.launchpad.net/people/philbull