Videos Autoplaying when clicking the latest video

Due to my slow internet connection I don't stream video from the site, I go to the latest video and choose to download instead. Saves me from the constant buffering I would be experiencing.

My issue now it that the new site is playing the video automatically when I click on the video via the banner (the huge link you see when something new is posted). If I scroll down and choose the same video the auto-play doesn't happen.

Is there any way to turn this off, because its pretty annoying. I'm sure a lot of people stream the content via the site, but unfortunately I cannot do this. I'm not asking to change the back-end or whatever, just a means for me personally to disable this auto-play dealio you guys got going on.

I would also like a way to disable this. Like @harinosho, I download a majority of my videos to play later locally and it's just an extra step to have to pause the video. It's also annoying that having it play for that 1 second makes it part of my Continue Watching carousel.

@outrager: Glad I'm not alone in this request. Would be helpful an alternative would have the download button on the thumbnail so we would not have to click into the video and can just download from the mainpage.

But I'm guessing the site needs the clicks for stats or something..

I brought this up with an engineer and I'm not sure what the resolution was but I'll see if I can find out.

@rorie : thanks for the response duder. I know this would be pretty low on the priority pile but I think @outrager and I appreciate it.

If it helps I noticed if you middle click "Watch Now" or right click it and open in a new window on videos on the main page they dont auto play for me. Its not always an option but its usually on the newest videos at the top of the page. I could be wrong but it seems to always work for me.