Sky GO UK (1 Viewer)

[Jason Pyke]

Tell me about it - the nearest cabinet is about a mile away, but it's shared with a few villages (exchange is over 2 miles away). At least it beats the 1.5Mbps I was getting...

 

[TheBatfink]

Hi, I'm definitely not experiencing any pausing, but I am using Win 8.1 with IE11. Unfortunately I can't test it on a windows 7 PC (it's annoying I can only register 2 machines with Sky!).

Just seen you system spec from your logs - it looks like it'd be easily enough to deal with this. It might still be worth checking what your processor load is like in task manager whilst watching a video in Sky Go through MP. To do this you'll need to set the browser host to debug mode so it runs in a window instead of full screen - if you edit C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\plugins\Windows\OnlineVideos\OnlineVideos.WebAutomation.BrowserHost.exe.config in notepad you can change the value for "DebugMode" from "false" to "true".

Hey Jason. Sorry I didn't get around to this after you took the time to offer up suggestions to help. I now can look at this

So last night I played the Cardiff game on Sky Sports 1 using OV. It was juddering all over the place. I fired up Sky GO in a normal IE session (MePo closed) and whilst it wasn't perfect judder wise - it was a far cry from the MePo stream and was watchable. I've just done the test you mention above and taken a screen shot while it is running in window mode. It's barely making a dent in resources.



I have also tried using your batch script to view in the browser independent of MePo. The video quality is as good as the stand alone IE instance.

So then I fired up MePo and tried out live TV again and it seems OK (still shite on panning but I know that's Sky and their shite streaming).

Now I'm kind of lost! Guess I will keep and eye on it and see if I can tell what condition is triggering the issue if it happens again :/ Thanks for the help!

EDIT: Now I've got cricket on it's doing my head in again. Fast panning is so choppy. Maybe I will repeat the above when football is back on and see if there is a more noticeable difference when there is lots of panning.

Additional info. I usually have 50hz, I tried with 60hz and didn't notice much difference in standalone IE. Choppy panning is usually an issue of??

 

[Jason Pyke]

Thanks for trying the tests - it's interesting that it worked after running it manually, although I'm not sure what we can do with that.

One thing I will say is that I used Sky Go for the first time in a couple of weeks last night to watch a film and when it started it was stuttering terribly all over the place (I've not had it like this before). I tried a few things to fix it on the fly and the only thing which improved it was to turn off Application Storage in the Silverlight configuration. It may be that this was a coincidence and it reinitialised Silverlight behind the scenes or something, but it definitely improved the stuttering.

The thing I did notice throughout the film was that fast panning was not smooth at all (I normally watch comedies, so its not noticeable), I'm sure this is to do with their encoding, although I can't believe Sky would do this to their streams.

 

[erichzann]

Yep the storage fix is the current workaround being used in the sky forums.

Start the stream, then pause it, disable application storage in silverlight, then resume the stream.

Once you have finished watching you will have to enable application storage again otherwise you can start the stream.

 

[TheBatfink]

The Silverlight Application Storage option is a known work around to some problem - or at least Sky saw fit to sticky that action on their Sky GO official forum. http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Go/On-Demand-Stuttering-Workaround/m-p/1751133 maybe it is possible to do that programatically.

I guess it's just a case of waiting for them to pick up the quality of their streams. Sky fry my head :/ The panning has to be a encoding framerate issue. If the BBC and other terrestrial channels can get their content playing fine, I honestly don't see what the issue is with Sky sorting out there stuff.

 

[DragonQ]

It's just poor decision making. BBC iPlayer HD video is encoded at 720p/25, which means the frame rate is the same as what you see on TV for progressive material (e.g. dramas, some comedies). I've watched stuff from iPlayer using the Online Videos plugin for MediaPortal and there's no problem with repeated/dropped frames because the frame rate matches the source. Interlaced material won't look as smooth as on TV since it'll be 25 fps instead of 50 but at least there's no artificial judder like you see on Sky Go.

I'm still waiting for the first catch-up or online video service to offer 50 fps video. I wonder which'll come first: 1080p/50 online video or 2160p/100 TV broadcasts (probably in the form of "BBC UHD").

 

[Jason Pyke]

Just so you know I've just submitted a patch which enables/disables the Silverlight application storage automatically when Sky Go is played. Because of the shared nature of some of the code it won't actually go out until the next Online Videos release.

 

[TheBatfink]

Hi @Jason Pyke now OV has updated, will this now be active? Thanks!

EDIT: Hmm, so I just opened up Sky Sports News HD live channel. I get the spinning blue icon, but before the channel loads I get a full scfreen message that says:

There appears to be a problem with Silverlight Application Storage on your computer.

The video player will not work when you are in 'Private Browsing' mode. If you are not in 'Private Browsing' mode, please ensure that the 'Enable Application Storage' option is ticket in the 'Application Storage' tab of the Microsoft Silverlight configuration dialog. This can be accessed by right clicking over the video player and selecting 'Silverlight'.

If the problem contrinues please check the 'Computer registration' section in Help.

For information, non-live media, i.e. Movies etc. do play OK. Looks like that option should not be changed for live channels.

 

[Jason Pyke]

I've published an updated Sky Go Site which doesn't disable application storage for Live Tv

 

[TheBatfink]

Hmm, even more interestingly, I just had the error again on a non live movie :/ the service is a bag of shite though. Amazon prime plays back pristinely - this is still micro judder for me so its definitely them.