Well, if you were fine w/.81, and there isn't any clear advantage for you in other areas from .97, you may want to downgrade back to .81. Fun!

I just did a softreset to see if that affected Somafm...nope, still goes to the media player and then the blue arrows that indicate downloading of the stream just stop after a few seconds and nothing plays. On my wife's Pearl they keep going and the stream starts to play.

Yeah, same here. This guy says it works fine for him on .97:
HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource - New Pearl OS - US Cellular 4.3.0.97

Yup...that's what I mean...this streaming stuff is still very sensitive to some number of variables that aren't clear (to me).

Maybe the upcoming 4.5 OS release and BIS update expected sometime in March or later will straighten things out...

I'm not confident that going back to .81 will fix it for me!

True...whatever is currently futzed might not get unfutzed by the downgrade.

(Aside...funny, the spell checker tells me I spelled "futzed" correctly, but marked "unfutzed" as incorrect.)

I can't imagine what could be futzed since m.youtube.com works perfectly. Might be a codec problem. But I did get it to work once, that's very confusing.

You're lucky. Regardless of the version loaded onto my Telus 8130 Pearl (.97 currently), I've never been able to stream from m.youtube.com

Does any streaming work? Maybe Telus blocks it...

With the right stations I can stream using MFRadio. Wouldn't be surprised if Telus blocks it somehow. So, if I want something I have to download to the memory card and then play it from there.

YEAH! I downgraded to AllTel .81 and audio streaming works once again!

You got lucky. Don't touch anything!

Weird...same phone, same carrier, I'm on .97 and I can stream (except for SomaFM). MFRadio works for me as well...

I can stream ORB and SomaFM. What do you listen to on MFRadio? Just looks like an advertising site to me.

The funny thing is that I upgraded in order to see if the new OS would allow streaming audio/video to play over my Bluetooth stereo headset, the .81 release does not. Instead I got no streaming at all!

I also was hoping for better memory management as I have to reboot every few days. I didn't get to test this though, I need the streaming.

Hmmm...I've been streaming audio over BT since .60, the initial release of the OS that came on the Pearl. Works fine. You can't stream audio from a video (e.g., can't watch a movie and hear the sound on the BT headset) with any release, that is just not supported, but streaming plain audio over BT works just fine in any release of the OS that I've used (and I've used them all but Bell).

If you're rebooting every few days, you likely have an ill-behaved app. That doesn't sound right for the later OS releases, which behave relatively well in terms of managing memory. How low does your memory get, and how much do you have after a reboot.

You would probably benefit from this thread...

http://www.blackberryforums.com/gene...ee-memory.html

So, you're saying you can listen to ORB over your Bluetooth stereo headset? I can listen to local content, but not streaming content.

When I reboot I have 16-17MB of memory. Over time it goes down to 4MB or lower and things stop working right and I reboot.

The main apps I run are Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Sync, Google Mobile Updater, Media, Chronograph, and Browser. Any ideas? I suspect its one of the Google apps.

I wonder what it is that keeps folks on the same OS from doing the same things. I read this tail of this thread and decided to try and listen to SomaFM with my Verizon Pearl running .97. Guess what? Works fine for me. BT headgear works for streams too.

Weird. Can you listen to streaming audio on a bluetooth stereo headset?

Yup. Doing it right now with SomaFM playing through BT headphone.

read the posts it seems like there is alot of waiting involved. besides streaming is there any real benefit to upgrading the OS.

i'm also not a huge fan of the d/l speeds i get off of the website.

At this point, the only thing that I'm sure that was fixed (for me, anyway) is that full-screen video didn't work if I used any controls while it was playing...the screen would stay stuck on video w/all the controls and the video player UI in view. Immediately after loading .97 this problem went away.

I'd say that unless you have a big problem w/.your current OS version, or unless you're a serial upgrader (which you're not, or you wouldn't have asked ) stick with what you have now.

There appear to be so many odd inconsistencies...there's a free pacman game (thread in this forum) that runs fine on my Pearl, another Verizon Pearl owner w/both .81 and .97 has been unable to get it to work.

I think Muldar (sp?) had it right - to paraphrase, "trust no Pearl."

I just don't get it. When I listen to local audio content, there is an option in the media player menu that says "Activate Handset" and another that says "Activate Jabra BT3030" (which is my BT headset). When playing streaming content, there is only the "Activate Handset" option. What do you (and Redflea) see in the menu?

Sorry for the confusion, WP, but I was talking about audio from local content to BT headset. I hadn't tried to play streaming content to a BT headset. Just tried it w/Orb and no go, no option to send to connected Moto S705 BT headset. However, when I went to SomaFM, though it won't play for me, there was an option on the menu for activating the S705. Since the audio won't play from SomaFM for me, can't tell if it would reall