The smplayer2 GUI is unable to play any movie. It starts up but complains that it is unable to start mplayer2 and to check the path to the executable. The smplayer2 log file show the following: mplayer -noquiet -nomouseinput -sub-fuzziness 1 -identify -slave -vo xv -ao alsa -nokeepaspect -framedrop -input nodefault-bindings:conf=/dev/null -stop-xscreensaver -wid 62914653 -monitorpixelaspect 1 -vid 0 -aid 0 -subpos 100 -volume 50 -nocache -ss 80799 -osdlevel 0 -channels 2 -af scaletempo,equalizer=0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 -softvol -softvol-max 110 /home/user/Video/movie.ts Adding a "mplayer" simlink that points to "mplayer2" solves the problem.
I reported this issue in too much of a hurry: browsing through the smplayer2 settings, I could find is possible to select which executable to launch: "mplayer" is the default setting, I changed it to "mplayer2" and delete the simlink I created before.