Icecast - Aug 2004 - strange downloading occuring...

I'm experiencing a strange phenomenon I think...

I've got a playlist of 3 mp3's (total of about 9MB) which I've got
ices0.3 streaming into icecast2.0

It seems that when I try and connect, it opens up windows media player, then
buffers for 2-4 whole minutes, then plays the stream.  I had my buddy try it,
and he said his computer downloaded for 10 minutes, a total of 128 MB before he
quit. I've tried typing in the address of the form:
localhost.com:8000/ices
and
localhost.com:8000/ices.m3u
and the same thing happens--it says its buffering, but the numbers jump a bit,
i.e.

buffering...19% complete
buffering...7% complete
buffering...32% complete
buffering...24% complete
--those aren't the actual numbers, but just a representation of what is
happening. Eventually it gets to 100% and plays, but I find this behavior odd.

Am I just wrong in assuming that this is supposed to start playing an mp3 as
soon as information is gathered to the player? Is it actually supposed to
download all mp3's first? And why would it say it was downloading any more
than 9MB?

Thanks,
Jesse

Hi:

You'll want to use the form http://localhost:8000/ices.m3u as your player
needs to open the URL rather than be  given the downloaded file by your
browser.  As you've identified, if you just type http://localhost:8000/ices
into your browser, the browser will try and download your stream.  And as
to why it downloaded so much, I think Ices 0.3 will loop your playlist - I
don't see any option for telling it to only play the files once.

Geoff.