Am I being too paranoid?

As you may recall, I cut the TV signal a week ago and the only regret I have so far is not being able to watch The Daily Show. Now apparently, Comedy Central posts many (all?) of the interviews on-line, but in their technical ignorance they have chosen to only support M$ media player 9. I have refused to let that particular worm into my system due, primarily, to the gaping security holes in this POS.
My question; are any of the computer gurus here able to assure me that it is no more vulnerable than Win2K pro? Or, is there an alternative media player that is; a.) secure, and b.) able to decode media player 9's stream?
Thanks for your help in advance. :freak:

And I've been using Windows Media Player 10 for quite some time with no issues.

I have Media Player, Real Player, and Quicktime all on my system. I use Media Player for files that are savable and Real Player for anything streaming. I only use Quicktime when I have to. I have to admit, I think either Quicktime installed wrong on my computer or it sucks. I don't particularly like Real Player because I don't have as much control in case I miss something. I hate having to watch something over from the beginning just because I missed a sentence. I actually like Media Player and my therapist says I actually am too paranoid. :shrug:

Media Player 9 or better. M$ put what amounts to several tracking features in 9, but I can thwart them. What I'm worried about are unreported security vulnerabilities. :argh:

How can I thwart them too?

the easiest way to do this is go to http://www.grc.com/default.htm and read and use the free utilities there (BTW Steve Gibson is one of the good guys in the IT industry + he really knows his shit). Now, I use 2K pro on this machine so there are many openings in XP that I don't have to deal with and you should check with someone knowledgeable about that Trojan Horse.
Next disable and don't use the media features (like finding titles and info about any music or movies files you play). If you use XP I don't know if there is any way to disable the registration notification 'feature', but this is one the most obvious holes. It was 'undocumented features' like this that allowed Sony to screw up thousands of PC's across the country with their copy protection a couple of weeks ago. M$ made a hole and told Sony it was there and how to exploit it.

nothing to do with gaping security holes though :D

The lengths they'll go to. :tinfoilhat:

things, and it seems pretty safe: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm