[grebus]

So, you're using FTP to the RAR archive of multiple episodes, and that gives you the "Buffering...." message - but navigating to an unrar-ed version and playing the AVI (over SMB/NFS or FTP?) works okay?

If that's the case, I'd immediately point a finger at having to FTP the whole RAR locally so it can be unrar-ed and then the file played... even if FTP allows some progressive playing (e.g. start playing while it's still downloading) for a normal file, I can't see that this would work on an archive, which may well need to be complete before it can be opened.

You've got it wrong. All other shows works rared. I never unrar...