I must be doing something wrong.

There are sites that I just can't visit, including 2 blogs on my blogroll. They hang Explorer and Firefox when I leave them. This happens on 3 different computers, so it is not an install issue.

I have different virus scanners running on the systems (AVG on 2 and Symantec on the other), all complete scans come up clean. Spybot Search & Destroy also comes up clean. The only common thread I can see that that sites that have automatic start of video content... excuse me a sec ...
(ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)
... [ahem] all hang in this manner.

I don't see options for turning this off in the browsers, I must be missing it because something like that is sure to exist.

Anyone know how to turn this stuff off on my end?

P.S. If there is no switch, what the heck do dial-up users do in this case? What do they do when first confronted with this? Not everyone is comfortable with the "three fingered Windows salute".