I am unfamiliar with wget, however, I think your problem might lay in that fact that the output from wget is going into the buffer and not directly to output. Say you want a simple loading sequence:

print "Loading";
for(1..10) {print '.'; sleep(1);}
[download]

That prints "Loading......" with the periods coming singly, at one second intervals. This won't actually happen because it's going into the buffer. Rather, set Perl's special $| (that's a "pipe") to 1, so "$|=1" and output will go straight to stdout. Aftwards, if so inclined, set it back to 0 for regular buffering.

Hope this helps,
Lacertus