When comparing Parole vs MPlayer, the Slant community recommends MPlayer for most people. In the question“What are the best media players for UNIX-like systems?” MPlayer is ranked 8th while Parole is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose MPlayer is:
Everything MPlayer needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Based on GStreamer
It's based on the GStreamer framework so it supports all GStreamer codes and plugins.
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPlayer needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Easy shortcut keys
Quick skip ahead buttons and other shortcut keys.
Pro No bugs , no lag in the video display
Pro Works via CLI and has multiple frontends to choose from
Some of the more popular frontends include Deepin Media Player, GNOME MPlayer, KPlayer, KMPlayer, Rosa Media Player, SMPlayer and Xt7-Player.
Pro Nice theme available to choose from
Also, the video window is separate from the main window making it less cluttered while playing audio
Cons
Con Tries to be a Audio and Video player at the same time
So it will never be the perfect audio or video player
Con Menu navigation is poor
There are no icons inside the menus which makes them very uncomfortable and slow to browse.
Con Fat
Depending on your desktop environment it could have some huge dependencies for example it needs GStreamer and its codecs plus GTK and some Xfce libaries.