@cyfm
Thank you for your reply. I am really glad that a newer version of mplayer is available for all of us to use.

If you find a way to make mplayer play streams smoothly that rely on video chunks, please share how this is done and then I will be more than glad to use it, and I won't need ffplay.

ffmpeg on the other hand is also useful for video conversions and process. That might be something nice to have.