Ask HN: Who Has This Pain?

Where are those media files from? It's pretty unlikely to encounter an RCE in media files these days. but if you are an important enough target, one could be crafted for your device or software (i.e vlc)

I never had that workflow but if I did I would wrap all media players with bubblewrap and that would be inside a highly restricted VM that could only access the domains in questions. The account used to do this on the VM would be single purpose with no sudo/doas permissions and detailed auditd with immutable configuration. No DNS, only /etc/hosts. Only outbound TCP port 443 permitted to the specific IP's in question. Everything else rejected and logged. No sensitive files on the hypervisor.

If the downside risks are big and probable enough, use a USB drive and open them on a computer with no internet connection.