athanasia

Codecs was my first hunch, since I've experienced playback failure due to lack of codec availability in the past. I've not used windows media play in a very long time, due to security concerns, so I am not sure how it deals with codecs. IIRC it attempts to download and install codecs on demand. So in theory had you tested with media player after your app failed to play the video, media player may have downloaded the codec.

I've never used the module in question, I don't see it in CPAN so I can't help much there. Creating a video player frontend in Perl - what are my options? however has an interesting discussion on a very similar topic, perhaps this is of interest to you.

Hope this helps

Martin