Live streaming using PPLive SOPcast etc. to watch TV online

I have subsrcibed to a football online webserver, hence I can watch live games not on tv etc. However, Panther only seems to want to run the bad quality streams. I want to use PPLive or SOPcast streams but Safari won't even attempt to open them (think the file type or web link is of .mms type). Any ideas? I have only been successful using windows media player (for mac naturally) to view anything. What exactly are these programs PPLive, SOPCast etc. Do they run as a part of a media player or are they seperate programs. Any help would be appreciated. To make it clear, you go to the different stream portals, open one, and safari opens up media player to try and play it. Should Quicktime be able to support this?
Cheers,
Cowan