the latest version of Mplayer is actually 1.0pre8.
mplayer now actually supports playing of WMV3 movies
with regard to the loss of overlay, there are a couple
of things
1) increase the stack of the monitor file (after I increased it
substantialy this 'error/bug' has not occured for me again (knock on wood).
2) IF you then get this fault
run loadmondrvs, then you will recover your overlay
abilities