I did some more tests.

under Xorg, if I do mplayer -vo x11, the problem goes away. if I use
the default (-vo xv) its there.

I've uploaded a little .avi movie of the effect. its not stunning, you
are looking at two instances of running mplayer, with OSD enabled. the
first one is -vo xv. when I press <space> and pause, the icon in the
top left is bi-stable alternating over "II" and ">" conditions, and then
stabilizes.

then I run -vo x11. this just goes away: it stops dead when you press
<space> and restarts cleanly.

obviously, this is just an example. Its much worse in practice if you
continue to play for any length of time.

http://algebras.org/ggm/mvi_1447.avi (14Mb)

cheers	

	-George