My previous install of mplayer-bin-1.0_pre8 worked OK with lirc, but after upgrading to mplayer-bin-1.0_rc1-r3 lirc support appears gone (the -lircconf option is not recognised anymore)
Have you read the changelog? :) *mplayer-bin-1.0_rc1-r2 (20 Feb 2007) 20 Feb 2007; Steve Dibb <beandog@gentoo.org> +mplayer-bin-1.0_rc1-r2.ebuild: Temporarily remove lzo, lirc support
mplayer-bin punted from tree