I'm new to this thread, sorry. But, if you install the load applet, start what stutters then look at the desktop to see the load meter, you'll find the CPU load all the way to the top. It's only a 400 Mhz processor and we're loading it all up with servicing Canola and the other monster app handlers. All that glitz simply eats the available CPU cycles. Dump the glitz and boot mplayer with its simple handler and the meter is no longer maxed out and the movie plays fine. All that graphic glitz simply eats too much computer on the simple machine.

The simple media player, if it has a codec, is faster because its osso is already loaded if you look at the processes running on the load applet, so there's less load with it than with raw mplayer.