play stream in player without downloading/recording

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

playing steams in a player without downloading or recording. how is it done? players like vlc smplayer mplayer even some kind of brand new stream rtmp player anything is fine. specifically rtmp off streaming sites. trying Replay Media Catcher 4 and it plays the video fine for a while but its really just playing the currently recording flv file and after a minute or so it reaches the end of the flv file because its playing faster than its making the file and it shuts off and you start again and it starts at the beginning so you're minutes behind. so how to play a stream rtmp in a player without downloading or recording?

i have been searching everywhere for a long time so even redirection to something that answers this specific question is fine. also tried rtmpdump but can't seem to get the right command to get it to work right. on windows xp sp2.