Hi,
i've seen that before, it had to do with the
initial burst
settings on the server... but other people have confirmed
vlc to work, so maybe you're using a different version.
I have watched the aKademy videos last year using VLC, so I
surely know that VLC is able to play theora encoded video.
BTW: Cool you use theora; I really hope it gets more known and
used soon.
if you have curl and theora-tools, could you try
curl <url> | theora123
in an xterm?
Interestingly, I have no theora123 installed, and there seems
to be no other package containing it for portage/Gentoo, so
I'm sorry. libtheora is installed for sure, but theora123 is
missing.
Best regards
ce