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Anonymous User
Not applicable

Now TV Player - High CPU usage on OSX

I recently downloaded the NowTV Player App to watch shows on my Mac (had previously been using the SilverLight player in Safari). My Mac Book is a 2013 Unibody MacBook Pro. With an Intel Retina GPU.

 

Watching programs on it seems to send my laptop in to overdrive! The fans spin up and it gets really hot. When the Player is focussed (the window I'm looking at), CPU usage jumps up to anywhere from 50-90% with nothing much else in the background. Minimizing it or looking at another window the usage will drop down again. Looking at the Activity Monitor on my Mac, I see "CiscoVideoGuard" as taking up most of that usage, which I guess it the DRM being used. It also uses considerable amount of energy which I suspect will have an impact on my battery life watching it for more than a couple episodes at a time.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this? It makes late night watching without headphones difficult as the fans are spinning up so high and I need to raise the volume to compensate!

 

Thanks

 

21 REPLIES 21
Anonymous User
Not applicable

Its brand New DRM decoder generation and a H26? decoder...

So it does take more CPU...

If the apps got memory issues and CPU optimization problems it can cause HIGHER GPU usage... 

 

New apps do that...

But now its confirmed as a cisco app clone... we can now confirm its just likely a bad decoder full of bugs...

commanda6
Legend 5
Legend 5

@Anonymous User wrote:

Its brand New DRM decoder generation and a H26? decoder...

So it does take more CPU...

If the apps got memory issues and CPU optimization problems it can cause HIGHER GPU usage... 

 

New apps do that...


@Anonymous User Is correct. This isn't a new thing @Anonymous User

 

NowTV's content is DRM protected, which means it's encrypted. It is being decrypted and played as the data reaches your laptop to decrypt something that has been properly encrypted takes a lot of hardware grunt,  Plus your laptop is also having to playback video which has been compressed to reduce bandwidth usage. This will also most likely add to the CPU usage.

Silverlight also uses quite a lot of CPU power to playback DRM protected content. Back when virtually every streaming service of note was using Silverlight if I strained HD protected Silverlight video on my windows laptop. The CPU usage was typically between 40 and 60%. (The machine was a second-generation Intel I5 at the time , so it wasn't underpowered by any stretch of imagination.) The CPU usage would be less than that for protected Silverlight SD video.


I do not work for Now . I am simply a Now customer trying to help I am a Community Contributor This means that I know a lot about the service. But just like you I am still a customer. This means I cannot help you with issues that would involve looking into your account directly. A member of the now TV forum team or live chat will need to assist you with these issues.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

@commanda6 wrote:

Spoiler
@Anonymous User wrote:

Its brand New DRM decoder generation and a H26? decoder...

So it does take more CPU...

If the apps got memory issues and CPU optimization problems it can cause HIGHER GPU usage... 

 

New apps do that...


@Anonymous User Is correct. This isn't a new thing @Anonymous User

 

NowTV's content is DRM protected, which means it's encrypted. It is being decrypted and played as the data reaches your laptop to decrypt something that has been properly encrypted takes a lot of hardware grunt,  Plus your laptop is also having to playback video which has been compressed to reduce bandwidth usage. This will also most likely add to the CPU usage.

Silverlight also uses quite a lot of CPU power to playback DRM protected content. Back when virtually every streaming service of note was using Silverlight if I strained HD protected Silverlight video on my windows laptop. The CPU usage was typically between 40 and 60%. (The machine was a second-generation Intel I5 at the time , so it wasn't underpowered by any stretch of imagination.) The CPU usage would be less than that for protected Silverlight SD video.


 

Given time they will likely get the app optimised better and get the CPU usage lower but not by much... about 5-7 %  of current usage is normal for a post release fix...

 

Software decoding uses alot CPU its why DRM systems are now being built into Hardware chips but that means out of date devices can't run services...

This Is why the DRM agreement netflix has done has up set ALL I5 owners... who wanted DRM to be a software DRM to watch HDR and 4k on netflix PC streaming...

 

 

commanda6
Legend 5
Legend 5

@Anonymous User wrote:

@commanda6 wrote:

Spoiler
@Anonymous User wrote:

Its brand New DRM decoder generation and a H26? decoder...

So it does take more CPU...

If the apps got memory issues and CPU optimization problems it can cause HIGHER GPU usage... 

 

New apps do that...


@Anonymous User Is correct. This isn't a new thing @Anonymous User

 

NowTV's content is DRM protected, which means it's encrypted. It is being decrypted and played as the data reaches your laptop to decrypt something that has been properly encrypted takes a lot of hardware grunt,  Plus your laptop is also having to playback video which has been compressed to reduce bandwidth usage. This will also most likely add to the CPU usage.

Silverlight also uses quite a lot of CPU power to playback DRM protected content. Back when virtually every streaming service of note was using Silverlight if I strained HD protected Silverlight video on my windows laptop. The CPU usage was typically between 40 and 60%. (The machine was a second-generation Intel I5 at the time , so it wasn't underpowered by any stretch of imagination.) The CPU usage would be less than that for protected Silverlight SD video.


 

Given time they will likely get the app optimised better and get the CPU usage lower but not by much... about 5-7 %  of current usage is normal for a post release fix...

 

Software decoding uses alot CPU its why DRM systems are now being built into Hardware chips but that means out of date devices can't run services...

This Is why the DRM agreement netflix has done has up set ALL I5 owners... who wanted DRM to be a software DRM to watch HDR and 4k on netflix PC streaming...

 

 


@Anonymous User yes I heard about Netflix Smiley Sad

 

 


I do not work for Now . I am simply a Now customer trying to help I am a Community Contributor This means that I know a lot about the service. But just like you I am still a customer. This means I cannot help you with issues that would involve looking into your account directly. A member of the now TV forum team or live chat will need to assist you with these issues.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

Thanks all for the thoughts, indeed I understand that DRM does take processing to decrypt, however I'm using other DRM'd streaming services as well (Netflix, Amazon Prime) and don't have issues with their services, and the Silverlight version ran of NowTV fine on my laptop a few weeks ago.

 

I understand this is relatively new (the app at least) - I've got a note in to the support team through their ticket system - perhaps it will be escalated to the developers from there. Just wanted to see if others were seing the same as me and if it might have been something on my end  before I went that route.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

How is it Amazon Prime and Netflix can offer HTML5 Support without this issue, why does Sky force us down this road?

 

Netflix can do it at 1080p and Amazon Prime at 720p so why not Now TV?

Anonymous User
Not applicable

From what I understand, to support HTML5 the content providers essentially need a separately encoded video file for each browser - HTML5 includes the umbrella support for DRM but each browser has a different decoder implemented in to it. I guess by supplying this App this offers a solution to launch it from the individual browsers without needing a differently encoded file, and then relying on the app to do the decoding.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Lot's of great discussion here on DRM and we certainly appreciate the high CPU usage. We are actively working to address this and one of our upcoming releases should have some improvements in terms of performance.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Performance still terrible on my macbook, could barely hear the audio with the fan running high.