Fortunately I have solved the problem I was having. The problem was network and not mplayer. The firewall in my belkin router was stopping the stream after a period of time. It also would halt the stream in RealPlayer. I moved my box to the outside of the firewall and all is again working correctly. This started after switching to a Netopia bridge modem. I record all of BBC7 listen again schedule each night so I can have mp3s for the linksys radio. I love mplayer because I can start simultaneous sessions and download >20 streams and still be inside the bandwidth of my DSL. When the longest show is done playing I start my wave-to-mp3 script. About 2 hours later I have all of the shows on my media server in mp3. Thanks, Jim