for somethings mplayer just works out of box, where it doesn't for vlc, e.g. : curl http://blah/blah/some/hidden/network/stream http://blah/blah/some/hidden/ne

for somethings mplayer just works out of box, where it doesn't for vlc, e.g. : curl http://blah/blah/some/hidden/network/stream http://blah/blah/some/hidden/network/stream | mplayer - which I've seen fails on vlc