So I hooked up my Verizon FiOS HD set top box last night, and as I was trying to figure out on my own how the DVR works—which consisted of me repeatedly (and incorrectly) hitting the DVR button—the lip sync became more and more delayed when I got back to the full screen.
Why is this?
Even unplugging, waiting, and replugging the power cord to “re-set” the box wasn’t helping.
How do I fix it?
edited to add: HD box is connected to TV with HDMI, and connected to receiver for surround with optical. God, please don’t tell me that because my receiver doesn’t process sound through the HDMI, that I will always have this problem!!!
I’ve seen that problem on other DVRs. The video and audio streams get out of sync with each other, usually due to software bugs in the DVR. Stopping and restarting the program usually resynchronized the audio and video. I’m not sure why your box is being so stubborn. I’ve read many complaints about the poor quality of the software in DVRs provided by the cable companies. Maybe Verizon has similar problems with their boxes.
Let’s say this is a problem with the sub-par DVR (I’ve heard rumblings of complaints too). Why would a cable company even offer a crappy DVR? Why not just require us to shell out the money for our own DVR solution?
I totally forgot that we were renting our DVR. Well, I’ll have to get to the bottom of what’s really causing the delay before I start blowing steam out of my ears.
As a matter of clarification, this delay happens on a live channel (we happened to have it on HBO HD channel) merely from pushing the DVR button, being taken to another screen, and exiting back out of that screen to live TV, and it got progressively worse each time I went to the DVR screen and back.
I wondered if it had to do with the fact that the pic was going straight to the TV and the audio was going through the receiver, but now that I think of it, the volume on the TV itself might have been delayed too, which would debunk that theory. I’ll have to try to recreate the crime…
I have the misfortune of having a receiver that doesn’t carry audio through the HDMI. I’m trying to convince manthous that we really need to upgrade to the least expensive receiver that will carry audio/video, but right now he says “no way, we’ve spent too much already”
Sorry for the post-arrhea—more clarification: ideally we should be running everything through a good, up-converting, HDMI-audio/video-capable receiver directly to the TV, but since we have a shitty receiver, we have the receiver handling the audio via optical from the DVD player and Verizon box out to the surround sound speakers, and the DVD player/Verizon box are both connected directly to the TV via HDMI.
This used to happen a lot on my comcast box early on. Seems to be pretty rare now. You might try returning the box and asking for a new one. If it’s a software problem, you might not have an easy fix, unless for some reason you have an older version. AFAIK, software updates happen automatically.
As a matter of fact, I just spent the last 45 minutes on the phone with Verizon (all of my troubleshooting was ruling out everything but the Verizon box). They attempted to run some remote tests and weren’t successful. They’re going to bring a new box this week and make sure it works before they leave.
Your mention of software—you’re talking about software on the HD box, correct?
I’ve got a Verizon HD Fios box as well, and I see this occasionally. I’m playing audio through the TV though. It only happens when I’ve been doing some trickplays (skip, rewind, etc.) through the DVR, and usually another skip cleans it up. I’d suggest disconnecting the optical link to your receiver and seeing if it happens with audio just through the TV.
I run coax digital audio to my receiver as well, but rarely use it. When I do, it’s always synched.
In that case, if you’re just waiting for a new box anyway, try this - any time it gets out of sync, hit pause then play, or skip back, on the remote. You’ll now be watching the show from the DVR buffer (since any live show you’re currently watching is always being written to the hard drive anyway) instead of live, which will probably go through a different software path, which may help. Not a long term solution, but it may make your TV usable until the new box shows.
Poke through the menus a bit and see if there’s a setting for audio sync. My Dish Network DVR has an option, buried deep in the settings somewhere, to sync the audio to either the HD feed or the SD feed of a given channel. Switching that setting, if it exists, may improve things.
My problem being that no part of the DVR features work. No pause, play, record—nothing. Even after being away from TV watching for a whole day, there was no improvement on that one channel—in fact, it seemed worse. Other channels seemed “off” too (although not as bad as this one) So hopefully a new box will fix all of this.
I will make sure that the dude (or dude-ess) who brings the new box shows me where this is.
Funny side note: I was on the phone for a long time with Verizon the other night (found out the agent was a Buckeye, so we became fast friends). She kept apologizing for it taking so long to get information about my account and said that they don’t have FiOS service at their call center. Ha.
Oh jeez, you’re screwed six ways from Sunday then, huh? When the installer brings the new box, don’t let him leave until he’s demonstrated all the DVR features and you’re satisfied they work correctly. Then bug Verizon for a credit of some kind - you shouldn’t have had to put up with this on a new install.
My understanding is that you are always watching from the hard drive, even with live TV.
Receivers will have this capability on the more expensive models. It’s not really an audio sync - it’s an audio delay. It works fairly well when the delay is consistent, which it usually is not IME.
Keep in mind that there is no magic fix to the overall audio sync issue. It exists due to modern digital video processing. The audio and video take different processing paths at multiple points throughout the delivery chain. With older analog processing, everything stayed in real time and sync was not an issue. Unfortunately, we need a sync signal that was never thought of when the standards were developed. When the sound gets out of sync, it could have a root cause way back up the feed as well as at your box. Since video processing typically takes longer than audio processing, an audio delay can be of some help, but you cannot eliminate this problem with today’s technology.
Depends on the hardware. The box is certainly always writing the live TV you’re watching to the disk, but newer hardware will also display the live stream, rather than reading from disk. Makes channel change a lot faster. The trick was to be able to flag what frame is being currently displayed, so if you go from live TV to trick play (like by hitting pause), it could pick up at exactly the right spot.
I have FiOS but I’m not at home; try hitting the STB button on the remote, followed by Menu. That gets you to the set-top box menu. There are not a lot of options so you should be able to find out pretty quick if there’s a sync option.
I’m a Wolverine so I’m helping you against my better judgement.
