i want to be able to either fast-forward an mms audio feed or download it. i can listen to the feed with xine but mplayer doesn't work. the fast-forward (slider) doesn't work on this feed with xine. i tried mms_client to download it but that doesn't work either. all three of these applications give the error: "Connection refused", however, xine manages to continue past the error and plays the audio.

what i'd like to know is if the fast-forward slider is supposed to work with mms on either xine or mplayer and why xine can read this feed but mplayer and mms_client can not.

here is the feed:
xine mms://mms.thestreet.com/cramer060105.wma

______________________________________________________________
mms_client gives this output:

host : >mms.thestreet.com<
path : >cramer060105.wma<
file : >/cramer060105.wma<
creating output file 'cramer060105.wma'
port: 0000db06
socket open
request: Connection refused

______________________________________________________________
mplayer gives this output:

MPlayer 1.0pre5-RPM-3.3.3 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team

CPU: Intel Celeron Covington/Pentium II Deschutes,Tonga/Pentium II Xeon 447.8 MHz (Family: 6, Stepping: 2)
Detected cache-line size is 32 bytes
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 0 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection - WARNING - this is not optimal!
To get best performance, recompile MPlayer with --disable-runtime-cpudetection.
Reading config file /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf
Reading config file /home/mike/.mplayer/config
Reading /home/mike/.mplayer/codecs.conf: Can't open '/home/mike/.mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Reading /etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: 73 audio & 180 video codecs
font: can't open file: /home/mike/.mplayer/font/font.desc
font: can't open file: /usr/share/mplayer/font/font.desc
Linux RTC init error in ioctl (rtc_irqp_set 1024): Permission denied
Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your system startup scripts.
Using usleep() timing
Can't open input config file /home/mike/.mplayer/input.conf: No such file or directory
Input config file /etc/mplayer/input.conf parsed: 53 binds

Playing mms://mms.thestreet.com/cramer060105.wma.
Resolving mms.thestreet.com for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: mms.thestreet.com
Resolving mms.thestreet.com for AF_INET...
Connecting to server mms.thestreet.com[209.67.12.173]:1755 ...
Connect error : Connection refused
Resolving mms.thestreet.com for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: mms.thestreet.com
Resolving mms.thestreet.com for AF_INET...
Connecting to server mms.thestreet.com[209.67.12.173]:1755 ...
Connect error : Connection refused
asf_streaming_start failed
Check if this is a playlist which requires -playlist option
Example: mplayer -playlist <url>
Unable to open URL: mms://mms.thestreet.com/cramer060105.wma

i'll take the lack of response as a "no" on the ability of xine or mplayer to fast-forward on mms files. looks like microsoft wins again.

finally figured out that xine can download the stream by adding #save:filename to the mrl. for this to work, had to uncomment the option "media.capture.save_dir:" in ~/.xine/config and append the destination directory.