Can I disable plugin-container.exe in 20.0.1 and still stream video?

Question

When I try to stream TV shows with Firefox, I receive high Firefox disc usage warnings from my Norton antivirus. I believe this is due to the gigantic plugin-container.exe that Firefox apparently runs the Flash player inside of. When I look at it in Taskmaster plugin-container has been using 150 k + after just a few minutes and continues to go higher the longer I watch. If I continue to watch without doing anything, eventually the video begins to stutter and then stops while the sound keeps playing. My system slows down to the point where it takes 5 min to stop the player after clicking the control, and a half hour for my system to process the commands to shut down Firefox and restart.
I've been able to work around this by putting the AV into extended Silent Mode to save CPU and by closing the browser after each and every episode, then reopening it again. Obviously this isn't an optimal solution.
I tried shutting down plugin-container using the Taskmaster but this also killed my video. When I closed the window and restarted the video, the plug-in-container came back. In this current version of Flash 20.0.1 is there a way to disable it forever that will also allow me to stream video? IE8 didn't play nice with web pages but Firefox isn't playing nice with video streaming. Is there a fix that doesn't involve a new PC?
Hard drive currently has 298 Gig free
5/10/2013, 18:06:35
Machine name: TIGERFLOWER
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.130307-0422)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Dimension XPSGEN5
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A02
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 460MB used, 3476MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Answer 1

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions. We know the problem isn't with Flash because I was running it without huge background files or lock-up up while using IE8.
Installing an older version of Flash isn't an option because newer versions resolve some of the memory usage and flickering problem that older Flash versions caused on the new Hulu site. Some sites also require the newest patch and return an error message if an older version is detected.
I'm not sure what protected Flash mode does or doesn't do and hate to mess around with Flash when we already know it's been running without issues on my system using the other browser.
What I DO know is that the problem only started occurring when I made the switch from IE8 to Firefox. This weekend I had it happen again when I only had Firefox open and the Norton AV running out of Silent Mode in the background. Only the Flash thumbnails on the Hulu home page were active, not the Flash player and I started to get slowdown and lose mouse control.
I posted the issue over on the Norton forum also but don't expect a workaround. I think disabling that huge plugin-container file might help. By the time I've watched one video both Firefox and plug-in container are up around 200k each, much,much, much larger than anything else running on my system.
So is disabling plugin-containter still viable? Firefox crashing is never going to happen, if plug-in container freezes up my system first. Continually closing and reopening Firefox as a workaround doesn't seem to be way it was intended to perform.