The -playlist flag will work with .m3u playlists as well. For example, it works with ACB's radio Main Menu archives. As to the questions about showing tags, Mplayer seems to be incapable of showing tags in OGG vorbis files, but will show them in MP3 files. The -quiet and -really-quiet options will lessen the output of Mplayer. You can set defaults with the file .mplayer/config in your home directory. The man page briefly explains this. I have mine including the line "cache=1024" because I find that streaming audio from slower web sites works better with this as the default. My only complaints about Mplayer are that I wish it would automatically recognize playlists without requiring the -playlist flag, and I wish that, when you paused and unpaused playback, the status line would pick up where it left off rather than drawing a new status line. What I mean is that you will still have the previous status line which will be stopped where you paused the audio. You could press the space bar several times and have a screen full of old status lines.
