Buyer Beware: NBC Direct Beta- Not a Happy User Experience

by Don Burnett

Today I restarted my computer, I had recently installed the NBC Direct Beta, and even though this uses what looks like WPF and Flash Video, after this I found my x64 Vista installation starting to LAG tremendously. I finally traced it down process by process, and this download unfortunately had installed a component it uses called the OpenCase Media Agent.. I had considered giving NBC Direct a really great write-up here because I really enjoy the application and most of it's implementation quite well..

GOOD RIAs and BAD RIA's...

While researching however I found my machine slowing down, mostly because of this process called MediaAgent.exe which was swallowing over 30 megabytes of RAM at one time and taking up way to much CPU time even when I wasn't even running the NBC Direct Beta.. The only way I could solve this problem and get my machine back to normal was to terminate the task and uninstall the NBC Direct Beta completely..

 

This is what ExtendMedia has to say about the agent on their pages:

"Maintaining a high quality service is all about a close relationship with the consumer. The OpenCASE Media Agent provides a client-resident application that helps you maintain this direct and persistent connection to your customers and their devices.

You control the end-user experience. The Media Agent does not have its own presentation layer, but instead exposes programming interfaces (.COM, .NET, ActiveX) for easy integration with existing players, web pages or other applications.

The Media Agent manages media downloads on the customer's device (PC and CE) by ensuring user authentication, delivering and revoking licenses, and providing intelligence on reporting. This intelligence - details on download progress, completed or cancelled videos, download device etc - help you trouble-shoot and improve your overall service offering.

Media Agent Key Benefits

• Provides a direct and persistent connection to your end customer
• Manages licenses, ensuring that users and devices are authorized
• Facilitates PC implementations
• Provides total control over the end-user experience "

 

Now I might be over-reacting here but I don't really like what I am reading here and I am really disappointed in NBC for implementing this in their product.. It sounds like a huge security risk, and I hate programs that keep open an internet connection on your machine to their system all the time.. Besides this it was sucking up nearly 30 Megs of RAM at a time and slowing down (humblingly so) my Vista x64 laptop with 2 gigs of RAM..

I am not the only one who has experience.. I looked around on the web and found I am not the only one..

There is a big example of this here..

http://www.ghacks.net/2007/11/13/what-is-mediaagent.exe/

Quoting the article there:

"The only application that I did install the other day was NBC Direct. A quick check of the NBC Direct FAQ revealed that they were indeed using the OpenCASE Media Agent “that manages your video downloads and monitors for any updates and/or new content to be downloaded”.

This means that this thirty Megabyte process MediaAgent.exe is wasting RAM and CPU cycles for doing nothing most of the time. I can understand that this process is started when starting NBC Direct but not if NBC Direct is not running at all.

The OpenCase Media Agent is a service that is installed with NBC Direct in Windows that is automatically started when Windows starts. The option would be to either disable the service which would surely make NBC Direct stop working or uninstall both NBC Direct and the OpenCase Media Agent to get rid of it."

I wholeheartedly recommend if you install this application to monitor what is going on with your machine. I praise NBC for getting into the Rich Internet Application arena, but if they are going to include "payloads" like this that are invasive running as a service that swallow RAM and CPU (all the things a TROJAN or virus would do).

I personally won't install this application until they get with ExtendMedia and this component becomes less invasive..

My personal opinion on this, is that mediaagent.exe in the least needs a serious re-write. Either way NBC should dump this if they want to be successful, otherwise this beta is going to see a lot of people disappointed and uninstalling when they figure out what this is doing to their machines..

Stealing RAM and CPU cycles and installing a service without informing your users should be a serious NO-NO..

 

Technorati tags: RIA, NBC Direct, OpenCASE Media Agent, ExtendMedia