Spark Sport - jerky video through Chrome on PC

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Talkiet

4792 posts

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#2619634 10-Dec-2020 19:24

mattyb:

That's a very old CPU. I would pop open task manager while playing something and see if the CPU or GPU is pegged at or near 100%.

Cheers - N

Yes it does get to 97-98%. CPU is circa 2012 so its had a good run. Seemed to work fine watching the 2019 rugby world cup though, and hasn't struggled with anything else I've tried.

Yep, that's definitely what's happening here - Not all streaming services use the same sort of encoder/decoder. Some are easier on video cards, some are easier on CPU... There's nothing actually _wrong_ here, it's just that your machine is struggling to decode the specific streams used.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

yitz

2074 posts

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#2619642 10-Dec-2020 20:02

It's all the DRM and encryption slowing it down, forcing it through the measly APU cores whereas plain unencrypted 1080p would probably be fine when handled directly by the onboard GPU.

A different browser could be worth trying. I presume you checked the CPU usage is attributed to the browser process?

mattyb

254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2619675 10-Dec-2020 21:07

Interesting. I've just tried using Firefox again and the live/ondemand coverage seems to work ok, the CPU seems to settle at about 85-87% and it seems to be coping. However if I play the highlights packages it seems to be worse than Chrome, and the CPU jumps around all over the place from 20-99% and video freezes often. I tried Edge and it maxes out on both.

mattyb

254 posts

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#2619677 10-Dec-2020 21:07

yitz: It's all the DRM and encryption slowing it down, forcing it through the measly APU cores whereas plain unencrypted 1080p would probably be fine when handled directly by the onboard GPU. A different browser could be worth trying. I presume you checked the CPU usage is attributed to the browser process?

Yes it is

mattyb

254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2619678 10-Dec-2020 21:08

Tzoi:

Do you have hardware acceleration turned on in the browser?

Yes, confirmed hardware acceleration is on in Chrome.

Tzoi

424 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2619777 10-Dec-2020 22:10

Try turning hardware acceleration off and see if that makes a difference

rlevis

347 posts

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#2619780 10-Dec-2020 23:08

For me, I did check the CPU when playing the cricket live (delayed) with perfect results, and it was at about 30% CPU and GPU maybe 50%. I don't have a Spark Sport subscription currently so I can't check a highlights stream to see what it requires. I can't imagine why it would be encrypted differently or need a gaming GPU to watch.

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mattyb

254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2620309 11-Dec-2020 19:42

Tzoi:

Try turning hardware acceleration off and see if that makes a difference

Yep, tried that and it makes it worse.

suthland

63 posts

Master Geek

#2621209 14-Dec-2020 10:13

I am using a Apple TV 4k to watch Spark Sport on a Sony 65X9000E TV. I find the live cricket broadcasts excellent quality, the EPL full games good but the EPL highlight packages jerky and almost unwatchable for any length of time. I have contacted Spark Sport but their only solution is reinstall app or trouble shoot my hardware. This doesn't make sense to me with the live cricket and EPL full games looking as good as they do and suggests to me they are recoding them somehow for their highlight packages. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to analysis the individual videos to prove this and the Spark help desk certainly doesn't want to admit it. It's very like the problem with the full EPL games when they first started broadcasting them before they improved the frame rate.

Handsomedan

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#2621223 14-Dec-2020 10:48

suthland:

I am using a Apple TV 4k to watch Spark Sport on a Sony 65X9000E TV. I find the live cricket broadcasts excellent quality, the EPL full games good but the EPL highlight packages jerky and almost unwatchable for any length of time. I have contacted Spark Sport but their only solution is reinstall app or trouble shoot my hardware. This doesn't make sense to me with the live cricket and EPL full games looking as good as they do and suggests to me they are recoding them somehow for their highlight packages. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to analysis the individual videos to prove this and the Spark help desk certainly doesn't want to admit it. It's very like the problem with the full EPL games when they first started broadcasting them before they improved the frame rate.

Football coverage all weekend has been awful on every platform.

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invisibleman18

1360 posts

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#2621413 14-Dec-2020 16:32

Handsomedan:

Football coverage all weekend has been awful on every platform.

Yeah terrible experience for the Arsenal game this morning watching via the Samsung Smart TV app. I only watch Arsenal games and don't often watch live. For middle of the night games in the weekend I'd usually watch when I wake up in the morning, and for weekday morning ones like this I usually be either at or on the way to work so would avoid the result to watch in the evening (or maybe watch the first half on my phone at lunch time and the second when I get home), but working from home today and it kicked off at 8.15 so I watched live. Picture was constantly breaking up and we had the black "Sorry for the interruption" screen at least 20+ times in the second half alone make it almost unwatchable. I see there Facebook is full of comments from people who had the same happen so won't bother to post mine too. Only people who had a worse experience would have been the 2,000 who were unlucky enough to get pulled out of the ticket ballot.

richms

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#2621505 14-Dec-2020 20:18

I was briefly looking at this for a friend and it seems there was something wrong with the encode of it, and many duplicated and dropped frames playing havoc with the motion interpolation on their TV. As long as they keep making things in silly frame rates and then converting them and then pushing them into a CDN that again converts them to suit obsolete playback equipment, and then that playback equipment is pushing it over a HDMI link at the wrong refresh rate it will look bad. But this was worse than normal. Even on a desktop PC it was lurching over the place, in some cases even looking like frames were in the wrong order. Unwatchable.

Richard rich.ms

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