SMPlayer, a cross-platform graphical front-end for MPlayer and MPV, has reached the 17.1.0 release last night. The new release features experimental support for Chromecast.

With SMPlayer 17.1, you can send local videos or online streams like TV channels, YouTube or Vimeo videos from SMPlayer to Chromecast device.

Just play a video in SMPlayer, then select the option “Play on Chromecast” from the Play menu. A web page will be opened (need Google Chrome or Chromium with Google Cast installed) and give the url of the video.

This web page can communicate with your Chromecast device with options to connect/disconnect, start playback and controls for play, pause, volume, seek…

How to Install SMPlayer 17.1 in Ubuntu via PPA:

The new release has made into the official PPA, available for Ubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, and their derivatives.

1. Open terminal and run the following command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer

For those who prefer Qt4 version, use the new PPA instead:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer-qt4

2. Then you can upgrade SMPlayer from a previous release via Software Updater (Update Manager) after checking for updates:

Or you can run the commands below in terminal to do install or upgrade SMPlayer:

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install smplayer smtube smplayer-themes smplayer-skins

How to Restore:

For any reason, you can easily restore the installation to the stock version via the ppa-purge tool:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:rvm/smplayer

For the qt4 ppa, replace ppa:rvm/smplayer with ppa:rvm/smplayer-qt4 in the code.