I don't know if this has been mentioned before but here goes.

For the last few months, I have had the same "Ready" problem with trying to stream videos. After flipping through the forums in search of an answer, when I found that none of the advice helped, I descided to do my own poking around and I think I have found a solution.

I am using the latest version of firefox and what I found helped was to go into "Tools" and "Options" click on the "Content" tab and under the category File Types, click "Manage". This is where I scrolled down to the AVI extension files and changed the action from "Use Windows Media Player" to "Save to Disk", contrary to what it says, this has actually allowed me to stream the files normally.