[MPlayer-users] Is there a good way to detect a lost connection?

I'm trying to dump asf-files from mms: - streaming with mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile dump-$(date +"%Y%m%d.%H%M").asf mms:irrelevant It works great until no more data is recieved (this connection only allows you to see 10 min at a time) where mplayer hangs/idles waiting for more data. I want to detect those connection-drops so I could restart mplayer with the same source on a new file. (sure i could just "sleep 600 / kill" in this case but aren't there a cleaner more general approach? Comparing filesizes on regular basis also feels like a bad choise.