mplayer failing to play on-line .pls files when started from cron

Question

I've built a system using a Rasberry Pi and a piFace. Push buttons are used to naviagate a menu system and select various options. These include playing (using mplayer) locally stored mp3 and m4a files and streaming audio from remote sites in mp3 and pls format.

When I manually run the programme on a local terminal - all works well and all these types of media play correctly.

However if I run the programme after reboot using the following crontab entry

@reboot /home/pi/go.sh >> /home/pi/log.txt 2>&1

The programme runs and plays all the media types listed EXCEPT the pls radio streams (e.g. as used by the BBC). With pls input mplayer runs (as shown by ps or top) but no sound emerges.

I've tried runing as both pi and root - with the same results.

Any suggestions welcome.

Kirby

locally stored audio files:

mplayer -quiet /home/pi/music/Rehab.m4a * WORKS *

mplayer -quiet /home/pi/music/Angel.mp3 * WORKS *

locally stored audio playlists:

mplayer -quiet -loop 0 -playlist /home/pi/tree/playlist_bob_dylan.txt * WORKS *

streamed radio:

mplayer -quiet http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r6_aaclca.pls * FAILS *

mplayer -quiet http://tx.sharp-stream.com/icecast.php?i=planetrock.mp3 * WORKS *

Answer 1

From Wikipedia:

PLS is a computer file format that stores multimedia playlists...

You need to use the -playlist switch, like so:

$ mplayer -playlist http://example.com/exampleStream.pls