seven second delay?

[Scott Fybush]

Rick Kelly wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Bob Nelson <raccoonradio@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think there's some kind of delay difference between WEEI and NESN (for
>> those who want to hear the radio broadcast but watch the TV
>> coverage...)
> 
> I have tried that, and no they don't sync up well at all.  It's not
> that I mind Don and Remdawg, I like hearing Jerry Trupiano though, he
> is very quite cleaver asnd talented.  BTW, same thing with the
> internet radio broadcast and TV.  They don't sync up.

Nothing syncs up anymore. There are too many places in the chain of a 
typical broadcast (radio or TV) these days where the signal can get 
delayed, and so many different ways in which those signals reach the 
viewer/listener that it's impossible to sync radio to TV (or vice versa) 
in a way that's going to satisfy everyone.

If you're watching NESN on analog cable, you're seeing a different delay 
from the guy watching on digital cable, who's seeing a different delay 
from the guy watching on Dish Network or DirecTV, who's seeing yet 
another different delay from the guy watching in HD. There's so much 
digital signal processing going on in my digital cable box that even 
when it's tuned to an analog cable channel, it introduces a noticeable 
delay against straight analog reception. (Very noticeable when I have my 
analog TV on in my office and Lisa's watching the same channel through 
the cable box in the next room!)

Radio's no longer a delay-free chain, either - there are all sorts of 
digital elements along the path (whether it be a satellite feed from a 
ballpark on the road, a digital STL, or IBOC) that introduce varying 
amounts of delay. Assuming WEEI(AM) gets a direct in-house feed of the 
network, its Sox broadcast should be a bit ahead of any of the 
affiliates, who get a satellite feed that's delayed by the amount of 
time it takes the signal to get 22,300 miles up into space and then back 
down to earth (plus any additional delays introduced by digital encoding 
and decoding, and whatever transmission method is used to get the audio 
from WEEI's studios to the uplink.

In some future upgrade to digital TV and radio standards, I'd love to 
see the introduction of some sort of time reference for live broadcasts 
that would allow receivers to introduce their own delay (memory is 
cheap!) to one side or the other to sync up radio and TV broadcasts at 
the receiver end.

s