Smplayer is the new selected video player, and its really good!
But the default skin could be better... we would need one that:
suggestions? 
Just for clarification.
What do you find missing in "rage player"?
Personally I prefer the minimal design in "rage" to the buttons and bar in "smplayer".
rage is good, but is too minimally-featured, it lacks features
mplayer (smplayer) has many, user needs features :), like selecting the audio track, subtitles track, etc... there's many on it that can be useful
now, about interface itself, it should be not saturated of options and also look beautiful / clean , so basically showing the main needed options (buttons) and then everything else from its extra menus
True that.
On E23 I've switched the default to "mpv" which plays everything, a minimal interface and (that's missing on "smplayer") a clickable bar at the bottom to jump the timeline i.e forward/backward.
You hover the mouse over the bottom and the timeline as well as some other clickable other options appear.
Mmmh, I never noticed that bar in mpv, and yeah is a good commandline/minimalistic player option
I assume smplayer is simply more featured (and so a better option), but the skin can be improved of course (and also more minimalistic). The only reason to use mpv than smplayer is that will support better the media files or to have better rendering performance 
