how to stream WMV videos in ubuntu

[tpatru]

I have XP and Ubuntu on my computer, and the only thing that keeps me using Windows is that I need to view streaming WMV videos for school. I use windows media player for this almost every day, and I also use the play speed settings to speed up the videos to 1.5x.
I tried watching the videos in Ubuntu using VLC, but I keep having trouble navigating through the video, and even pausing and restarting doesn't seem to work right. Is there a program that will do this reliably, or is there a way to get WMP running in ubuntu? I would love to get rid of windows, but all of my lectures are streamed solely in WMV, and I would need to get this working.

[reckless2k2]

If VLC isn't working for you, I'm not sure what else could be recommended. It should work fine in VLC unless there are some tweaks that need to be do to VLC.

You can run WMP through Wine but I don't know how great that would work for you. Unfortunately, some things keep you tethered to Windows.

[MikeTbob]

Can you explain in more detail, are you trying to view .wmv files over the net using a browser with VLC plugin, or are you trying to view .wmv files on your local hard drive?
Can you give us a link to one that you can't view?
Mplayer is another decent video player, which is probably in the Ubuntu repos.