This is kind of an obscure situation, so searching for other threads didn't turn anything up.

I use my N800 to stream a .wma internet radio station (the station streams in 128k mp3 format and 64k wma format.) I use the wma stream because I'm normally tethered to my Verizon BB Pearl and the 128k stream seems to be a little too robust for it.

Most of this goes on in the car, heading down the expressways at 60mph or so. I'd say 95% of the time, the stream comes through with no issues.

However, it's the other 5% of the time that's the problem. One of the following three things happens:

1 - the stream will buffer, stall and restart (I'd expect this - net congestion, switching cells, whatever - I have no issues with this behavior)
2 - the stream will stall completely and media player will not restart it -- I need to physically close media player and restart it, at which point the stream starts again with no problems
3 - media player dies mid-stream with an "Lost connection to stream, restart?" dialog, and when "yes" is selected, the stream restarts with no problems

Most of the time, behaviors #2 and #3 happen around the same places, so I wonder if it's because of poor cell coverage in these areas? But it's not always; for instance, the 'dead zones' tend to move around some and sometimes don't exist at all. In any event the signal strength meter on the Pearl is usually 3-4 bars; even though that's not generally reliable for this, it's something.

Does the built-in media player not have a very robust way of hanging onto Windows Media streams when they pause? Is there a better player for wma streams? I looked at mplayer and Canola, but neither seem to work for some reason.

TIA