How to asynchronously open URL with media player?

When opening a URL with the media player, I’m getting a severe hitch where the game thread stalls for over a second. I’ve tried using an async task to open the URL, but it doesn’t improve the performance. Any suggestions?

Local files open perfectly fine without the hitch. Do you think it requires editing the WmfMediaPlayer source code? The stalling of the thread really breaks the responsiveness of my application, so any help is appreciated.