I am using this for viewing wmv files off-line or sent as email attachments i.e. I am not using any plug-in's. It works very well - although, I don't care for the "phone home" feature. Whenever I view a wmv file (on my local machine) or start the player, the app goes out to the Internet. I disabled the "check for updates" - but, it is still trying to connect to a remote server. If I wanted my media player to spy on me, I would still be using Windows Media Player.