WARNING: OpenCase Media Agent by ExtendMedia, the media download manager that comes bundled with NBC Direct (beta) player, after installation remains hidden, and runs quietly in the background the entire time your computer is on and attempts to maintain an open Internet connection without your knowledge. OpenCASE (mediaagent.exe) drains significant CPU resources and has been known to cause major problems in the computers of unsuspecting NBC viewers. Only Windows XP and Vista users are effected. [21-March-2008]

YOU MAY HAVE A PROBLEM AND DON’T EVEN KNOW IT

If you’re like a growing number of people who have discovered how cool it is to be able to catch up on your favorite TV programs on-line, and if some of those shows happen to be on NBC, then it is a statistical certainty that more than a few of you have unwittingly become victims of an insidious piece of NBC “bloatware” – unaware of why your computer has been acting up and that the real reason has to do with the media player software package you downloaded in order to watch your favorite NBC shows directly from your computer.

To be precise, the real culprit is not the NBC Direct player interface, but rather, the other software that came bundled with it – OpenCASE Media Agent (MediaAgent.exe), a program developed by ExtendMedia Inc. OpenCASE Media Agent is the companion program that quietly installs itself along with the NBC Direct (beta) player download, reportedly to keep track of the NBC content you have downloaded and to rotate advertising that pays for that content.

In theory, there would be nothing really wrong with this arrangement but, unfortunately, the reality turns out to be far from the theory. After seeing firsthand how OpenCase Media Agent had brought my 3-yrs old laptop (1.30 GHz and 1 Gb of RAM) to a crawl, I have no trouble believing the claims that the program drains somewhere between 30 -60 MB of your system’s available memory. You can be certain, there’s nothing innocent or benign about OpenCASE Media Agent by ExtendMedia, Inc.

Here’s a synopsis of the problem:

• OpenCASE Media Agent downloads with NBC Direct and runs in the background whenever a user’s computer is on, and boots when the user’s system starts up.
• OpenCASE Media Agent hogs a 30+ MB of RAM and interferes with other active processes, causing systems to operate sluggishly, and contributes to time-delay errors.
• OpenCASE Media Agent attempts to keep an Internet connection open and tacitly communicates with outside servers without the consent or knowledge of the user.
• OpenCASE Media Agent monitors the DRM on the media a user downloads from NBC but there is sufficient reason to believe that it does more than what the ExtendMedia claims.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

In spite of differences in opinion on issues such as strict DRM content protection versus unfettered portability and peer-to-peer sharing, the overwhelming consensus by those who have something to say on the subject, all agree and recommend that you DO NOT download the NBC Direct (beta) media software package.

Gael Digital Media, Internet and digital media specialists, in their blog on the topic NBC Direct: Why Old Media Buys Bad Ideas, succinctly describe the glaring technically gaffs of the actual software architecture and expose the fundamental flaws in NBC’s business model, put it this way:

“… If you just love using IE, trust .Net 2.0 and enjoy fiddling with Flash are using Windows XP and don’t mine that the Open CASE software installed on your system runs all the time[s] consumes your bandwidth and eats up your memory then this might be the service for you.

The OpenCASE Media Agent is spying on you and exchanges lots of information about what, when and what else you’re doing on your system. While my analysis of the data that it is sends back to the motherships ExtendMedia and NBC is not complete, it is clear that it is spying on you. …”

Read the full article [November 21, 2007] » NBC Direct: Why Old Media Buys Bad Ideas

Don Burnett, a software developer who confesses a bias in favor of NBC’s on-line endeavor, won’t install the software himself, but recommends that if you do, that you closely monitor the process. On Don.Net’s WPF Design Blog, in the entry titled Buyer Beware: NBC Direct Beta- Not a Happy User Experience, Don has this to say:

“I personally won’t install this application until they [NBC] 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.”

Read the full article [November 26, 2007] » Buyer Beware: NBC Direct Beta- Not a Happy User Experience

PROBLEM, WHAT PROBLEM?

Interestingly enough, one of the most convincing bits of information suggesting that there is definitely something wrong, comes from NBC itself. On their software player download page, tucked off to the side and buried deep inside the other find print, under the heading All Microsoft Windows Vista and XP users (all editions), you will find this:

“The Open Case Media Agent powering the NBC Direct service “spikes” the CPU usage and does not decrease. A partial solution was rolled out with the 11/20/2007 update (build #5.2.0.1221). A more advanced solution is being developed and will be available shortly.”

The operative phrase here is: …“spikes” the CPU usage and does not decrease…

Sure, on the surface it looks good. NBC acknowledges the problem and says that they are doing something about it, but the fact that NBC felt compelled to say anything at all, in itself, is significant. It means that from a legal standpoint, the problem must be serious enough to warrant making a public statement to users. If it were merely a technical inconvenience that people were whining about, why mention it – why risk suggesting to customers that the software may not be the rewarding experience they’ve been promised? Take it from a jaded marketing guru, large-cap companies do not do anything that would remotely give their customers any notion that there’s something not quite right with their products or services, unless legally motivated to do so.

A GHOST IN THE MACHINE?

There is the question of whether OpenCASE Media Agent is doing more than monitoring the material that you downloaded from NBC, something perhaps a bit more sinister – like taking inventory of all the media files that are on your computer and reporting that information to interested third parties. It’s an extremely important question, especially if you are one of a very large group of people (including myself) who have files on your computer that you wouldn’t be comfortable exposing. It’s astonishing to learn just how many people there are who really don’t know what they have on their computers, not necessarily files they had forgotten about but also things they honestly don’t know actually exist.

Nevertheless, I wanted to know what the developer had to say about their software program, OpenCASE Media Agent, about what it’s supposed to do. Here’s how ExtendMedia pitches the program on their site to prospective customers like NBC:

“The OpenCASE Media Agent provides a client-resident application that helps you maintain this direct and persistent connection to your customers and their devices. …

… 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.”

Compare that to what Chris Gardner, chief marketing officer of ExtendMedia, told Chris Albrecht of NewTeeVee.com when asked about the concerns over OpenCASE Media Agent’s “spying”/intelligence gathering activities. As quoted in Albrecht’s article [November 20, 2007] NBC Direct Sucked…Your PC Resources, Gardner asserts:

“The NBC service is anonymous. You can see on the sign up process no personal info is captured at all. We do keep track of things like successful downloads, whether ads are viewed, connection acknowledgements & other networking communications, etc. But again, that data is not tied to any particular user and we capture no personal information at all. Think of the Media Agent as primarily a “download manager” with some extra capabilities for managing DRM licenses and supporting advertising so folks like NBC can take content they used to charge $2 for and make it free…”

Though NBC declined to respond, you can read the entire explanation given by Chris Gardner, ExtendMedia’s chief marketing officer, in Chris Albrecht’s full article. Chris Albrecht, however, sums up the overall sentiment, perfectly:

“I can’t imagine NBC or ExtendMedia winning any friends by having an app running in the background that manages advertisements, but this is a download-and-go service.”

So, which is it? Are they spying, or aren’t they?

Well… as you might expect, I was unable to find conclusive evidence to be able to form a definitive answer and resolve the conflicting assertions. Of course, the official software representatives say they doing nothing of the kind. But let’s be honest, even if they were, do really believe that they would admit it? Right.

On the other hand, software and digital media professionals claim otherwise, that they are in fact spying on you – yet they provide no material evidence that I’ve seen, such as lines of code (not that I could read it) or something similar; something that could trump the developer’s claim. Well, that’s it. In the end, we’re left with one word against the other. Well… not quite.

There is, however, something else, something that isn’t direct evidence, mind you, but something that is rather hard to explain. And when you put it together with other aspects of what is happening, it strongly suggests that there very well may be something more going on here, after all – and certainly, far more than what ExtendMedia would have us believe.

Consider the fact that OpenCASE Media Agent, the program that devours an un-Godly amount of your system’s RAM, is written for the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is essentially a Microsoft computer language for application developers, a system independent multi-device operating platform, said to be superior to both C++ and Java. How true that is, or is not, I don’t know, but it does seem to beg the question, why is it then that the OpenCASE Media Agent program is incompatible with either Linux or Apple operating environments? It seems logical to assume that if it were truly “operating-environment independent”, or functionally interoperable at a bare minimum, then it ought to work on systems other than Windows XP and Vista.

Regardless of this particular discrepancy, one of the big advantages to writing programs for the .NET Framework is supposed to be the way .NET handles memory. It is supposed to “free the developer from the burden of managing memory”. This particular aspect seems to infer that .NET programs have a better method of using the resident system’s operating memory, and if this is the case, then what exactly is the OpenCASE Media Agent, as a .NET program, doing with all that RAM it consumes – 30 MB or more?

Not only that, but it should also benefit from being on friendly turf, as it were. When you get down to it, it’s one Microsoft application functioning within another Microsoft application, namely – Windows. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to presume, therefore, that in a friendly environment the program should run more efficiently and consume less of the resident system’s resources, right?

Even if you ignore these questionable irregularities for a minute, you have to ask exactly what the program is doing with all that memory? Neither Picassa, nor Google Earth – programs that use a fair amount of RAM to run properly – don’t come anywhere near the amount consumed by OpenCASE Media Agent. So, again, I ask. What is it doing with all that memory, and why would it want to maintain an open Internet connection? I doubt sincerely that it’s merely using it to monitor and up-date the media downloaded from NBC, or simply to rotate the ads that support the cost of being able to provide the NBC content for free?

As I said, this isn’t categorical proof, but on the other hand, I don’t believe OpenCASE Media Agent is doing what ExtendMedia says it’s doing. Consider the following:

1. If the claim that the software program is doing nothing more than what they claim it’s doing is true, then it would be one the world’s worst, most incompetent applications, ever compiled.
2. Plus the fact that NBC, one of the “Big 3” media companies in the country, has elected to entrust this apparently bad application with the responsibility of coordinating and managing it’s costly premium content, potentially downloaded onto millions of computers worldwide.
3. And add that to the fact the program is piggy-backed onto the NBC Direct (beta) player download, and operates in the background on a user’s system without the user’s knowledge or express permission.

Together, you really have to question what is actually going on. Why use so much memory and why be so secretive about it? I’m sorry but it’s a little too much for me to swallow. I don’t buy it.

HOW TO GET RID OF THE PROBLEM

For a change, Linux and Apple users need not feel that they’ve been left out. Instead, this time they can revel in the knowledge that the problem effects Windows XP and Vista operating environments only. Nevertheless, if you discover that you happen to be one those unlucky ones, and you want to rid yourself of the problem, you’ll need to uninstall both the NBC Direct (beta) player and OpenCASE Media Agent.

You should follow the step-by-step removal procedure precisely as outlined on NBC.com. Below is an unedited exact copy of the removal instructions which were “cut and pasted” directly from NBC’s FAQ page. Also, you should check with NBC’s site directly, to be certain that these instructions haven’t changed. You can find them here » NBC’s FAQ page.

Q: How do I uninstall the Player?

A: To uninstall the Player, follow these steps:

• Click on the Start button
• Open Settings > Control Panel
• Launch Add or Remove programs
• Select “NBC Direct Beta” and click “Remove”
• Select “OpenCASE Media Agent” and click “Remove”

THE PAST, PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE

NBC discontinued providing their available programming on iTunes, where interested viewer’s could buy content for $1.99. Though the service was apparently popular, representing 40 percent of customer downloads from the iTunes Store, NBC broke with iTunes when they refused to accommodate NBC’s request to alter the existing pricing strategy, in favor of a change that would have effectively more than doubled the price of a download from $1.99 to $4.99.

Shortly thereafter, in mid-September 2007, NBC launched “NBC Direct”, where viewers have the option, to either watch their show episodes through their web browser window, or if they want a superior quality uninterrupted experience, to download them and watch them directly from their own computers – but only after installing the highly questionable media player software, first, of course.

As for “browser-viewable” content, FOX, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony and Warner Bros. have put their considerable weight behind a new Internet repository, Hulu.com, an online video-on-demand (VOD) service that distributes content free to everyone. Officially launched on March 12, viewers are now able to access their favorite NBC content directly from Hulu.com, or indirectly through another web portals, such as AOL video.

The question of whether or not Hulu.com’s will allow anyone to share and embed its content, the way you can with videos on YouTube, may have already been rendered moot, thanks to OPENHulu.com, a site that lets you do this for anything that’s on Hulu.com.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Delivering DVD quality content to users presents it’s own unique challenges. Taking a lesson out of the enemy’s handbook, namely “Peer-to-Peer” (P2P) file sharing, NBC has enlisted Pando Networks to “serve” their high-quality, ad-supported content, to viewers’ computers, through what they call “peer-assisted” downloads. From a purely technical perspective, this approach to delivering large media files is smart because it effectively reduces the amount of data being sent from their main servers.

When you take into consideration the nature of NBC’s relationship with Pando Networks, it makes more sense to see OpenCASE Media Agent as an important part of the broader scheme, to turn users’ systems into obediante “peer-assisted” servers – like “botnent zombies” that are meant to distribute downloaded NBC video content, exclusively. This is certainly the most believable explanation why the program eats up all that RAM, and why it tries to maintain an active Internet connection.

Put in simple terms, you are helping to drastically reduce the cost of delivering NBC content to other viewers when you download content to view for yourself, because the OpenCASE Media Agent has simultaneously turned your system into a secondary NBC content server, plain and simple.

If this is true, it’s definitely very un-cool.

. . . . . . . . .

Referenced URLs:

• Gael Digital Media: NBC Direct Why Old Media Buys Bad Ideas « Gael Digital Media
• Don.Net’s WPF Design Blog : Buyer Beware: NBC Direct Beta- Not a Happy User Experience
• NBC media download URL : NBC Direct (beta) player download page
• Chris Albrecht : NewTeeVee.com : NBC Direct Sucked…Your PC Resources
• NBC Direct (beta) FAQ : Software removal procedure : NBC’s FAQ page
• Wikipedia : Microsoft .NET Framework : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework
• Wired Compilier: NBC Universal Drops ITunes Downloads After Apple Refuses To Raise Prices
• Lifehacker : Watch Full-Length Television Online with OpenHulu