You are right this is indeed when using HD streams. Also if you have 90-100% CPU use with with 2 cores you would think it would get lower when you have 3 cores let's say around ~60-70% cpu uses.
Ahh well for now i have 3 cores and it's good to know that this behavior is normal.
For HD channels transcoding, it is normal to have about 90% CPU usae (based on my experience). For SD channels transcoding, there should be only 30 to 60 CPU usage. I use VLC to do that stuff and you see Enigma-TV process consuming CPU because VLC is embeded into the app ... but in fact it is the VLC process that use so much CPU, this is normal.
For your own tests, that could maybe use less CPU, you can for example download another VLC version and overwrite the existing VLC version that is installed under C:\Enigma-TV\VLC Do first a backup of this VLC folder before replacing files !
I have recently bought the application and so far all is ok, I just need to fine tune some stuff.
Q: How much CPU power/cores do I need for Enigma-TV ?
I have Enigma-TV running on a VM and can scale up to 6 cores and currently I have assigned 3 cores with each core running at 2.1Ghz (Intel Xeon E5-2620 v2) and memory is ok but I'm not sure this is enough. Before it got 2 cores and the cpu was spiking at 90-100% now with 3 cores it goes up to 80-90% and I wonder if this is normal. In taskmanager I see 80-90% cpu assigned to Enigma-TV.exe