That Mplayer as well as the gtk1 version uses the X11 driver and not XV so the behavior you see is normal. You can start mplayer by the command line and use the -zoom and/or -fs option to be able to view the video at full screen size. I am on Windows at work now but will try those commands later but I think they are correct.
Thank you for the reply.
I used the command
mplayer -zoom myvideo.avi
and indeed this allowed me to drag the display size to whatever I wanted. Certainly, this is a lot better but not ideal as I would prefer that the display just went immediately to my preferred size. BTW, using the -fs switch as in
mplayer -fs myvideo.avi
just gave me the same tiny 160x120 display (undraggable) in the middle of fullscreen black. Not good
When you say that this behaviour is normal for the gtk versions of Mplayer, does this mean that I should try the Xorg version?
Also, this would belong in the TCE extensions area instead of base.
Uh-oh
Perhaps you or another mod might want to move it to the correct section.