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TV delays in two ways

Yesteday, while watching the FSU-UF football game on ABC, I noticed two things; wondering if anyone here has any insight:

- We have a TiVo Premiere with a CableCARD and a DTA. Side-by-side, ABC on the DTA was 1.8 seconds behind ABC HD on the TiVo. Is this just a random happening?

- I like to listen to the game on a local radio station and watch it on TV with the TV audio muted. There was a 10-second delay between the radio broadcast and the game. Is this some sort of fluke due to digital broadcast delays, or are we still paranoid about a nipple showing up on TV?



Des Plaines, IL

HD and SD are not in sink and cable boxes / DVR's can add a few seconds of delay as well.

Also OTA has less delay then the same HD over a cable system.


Weirton, WV
reply to mahohmei

I got the opposite with the steelers vs browns game today. The tv is 10 seconds ahead of the radio.

There's sand in my tool bag

said by mikedz4:


Then your radio station you were listening to is including their own delay to bleep out mistakes. Or, they are simulcasting.
Ex-Tech at the Beach.
I speak for myself, not my former employer.

Schaumburg, IL
reply to mahohmei

Often, Comcast or maybe even the station may downconvert the HD to SD, and that can cause delays due to buffering along the line, in addition to the mixing of the numerous (typically 10-12) SD channels together. Most broadcast HD on cable are set up as 2 per frequency, which doesn't need any real processing as the bandwidth used for broadcast is half that for cable.

That said, I've often noticed that the DTA can still be behind my DVR a tiny bit, even when both are on the exact same channel.

The big secret of digital is all the buffering and delays that happen everywhere along the line. Not just in the 'broadcast', but in your cable box/DTA, and even your TV itself. All of that 120Hz/240Hz 'motion smoothing' stuff requires buffering a few video frames.