Sky Desktop Player constant bit rate drops!

[Web-Junkie]

Using the Sky Desktop Player on Windows 10, I log on to Sky via the Virgin Link on Sky Sports and launch the Desktop Player for the sports channel I want to watch and it's constantly dropping the bit rate throughout the program.

The same OS/tablet/Broadband (HUB3 VM100meg) when I had Sky Go never did this, but using the Sky Desktop Player I simply cannot watch ANY Sky Sports program without the screen going blurry due to bit rate drops. It's just random, could be 6-7 times in half an hour or more but it happens with EVERY program I watch!

Amazon Prime is OK, BBC iPlayer is OK, the Virgin TV Go App has buffering issues occasionally (and signing me out for no apparent reason) but it's nowhere near as bad as the bit rate drops in the Sky Desktop Player!

So what is the issue with Sky Desktop Player?

[newapollo]

Hi @Web-Junkie 

No problems on my PC using Windows 11.

Have you looked at Task manager to see which programs are running and possibly affecting the cpu/memory usage?

[Web-Junkie]

Taskmanger process view fluctuates from 22% to 54% CPU with the Sky Sports.exe (it launches 2 Sky Sports.exe processes for some reason) and 17%-18% using the Virgin TV Go Player, both at full screen and nothing else is consuming the CPU % in double digits (if you exclude System Idle Process).

So the Desktop Player does consume more CPU (mine is a 2.3GHz 6th Gen Skylake i3 on a Lenovo tablet) but not enough to cause stuttering/slowdown and the Wireless is AC and connected at 866Mbps so plenty bandwidth to the tablet even though the wired connection to the HUB is only 120Mbps so still plenty bandwidth there and the CPU Graphics is HD 520 DirectX 12 and runs PhotoShop quite well!

As I said, it worked fine with Sky Go, works fine with iPlayer and Prime but with Sky Sports it get's bit rate dropout.

I can't understand why I can't use Sky Go with Virgin as that just worked!

[newapollo]

Hi again @Web-Junkie 

I don't know why task manager shows 2 Sky Sports.exe processes running, even though only one has launched.

I don't  open the TVGO app when I want to watch Sky Sports on my PC - to be honest it's just a glorified shortcut which sends me to the sky sports web page to sign in/play the channel, so it's consuming uneccessary resources.

Instead I go directly to  https://www.skysports.com/  and click on Watch Sky Sports, and then chose the program/channel I want to watch, and click on Continue on the next screen since I already have the player installed

That's all I do (unless I want to run the .exe from the shortcut I placed in my toolbar) and it runs successfully  with no streaming or sound issues

You can even close Chrome or whichever browser you are using to save on running proccesses as the .exe runs in it's own window.

[Web-Junkie]

I do use the Sky Website to launch Sky Sports and then close Edge after it's launched, I was just saying the Virgin TV GO Player uses less CPU time than the Sky Desktop Player, so only the Desktop Player is running, no Virgin TV GO or Edge browser running when the dropouts occur.

As for the two Sky Sports process, I think one controls the overlay for the player (sound & full screen) as once you kill process that uses less CPU time you don't get the ability to change sound or maximise the player!