I have Comcast cable TV and quite regularly the video is a fraction of a second ahead of the audio. Its not on all channels at the same time. It seems most noticeable during some live broadcasts but it also happens during pre-recorded shows. I guess I should keep a log of times and channels but I haven’t done so. Calls to Comcast have gotten different responses.
“Its a broadcast problem beyond our control” What does that mean? I’m (over)paying YOU Comcast. Don’t blame your bad service on someone else.
“Its an issue with the Dolby and nothing can be done about it” Huh?
“Its a problem on our end. We’ll fix it” And is is fixed. For the moment. The next day or days later its still happening.
So what is going on and why can’t they fix it permanently? I can’t be the only customer that has this happening.
I’ve seen it a lot more on digital TV transmissions than I ever did on analog, and I see it on over-the-air, cable and satellite, so I don’t think it’s the fault of either Comcast or any specific station/network.
All I know is that the way the video and audio portions of the signal are encoded digitally aren’t the way they used to be mixed on an analog signal.
Awesome question since it happens to us. For some reason changing the channel and then going back to the original station seems to fix it. For the time being at least. It will eventually fuck up again.
Never called Comcast because they won’t ever admit the problem is on their end. It’s our problem.
Turning the TV on and off does the trick as well. As the poster above said, it isn’t Comcast’s fault. OTA digital TV does the same thing. Sometimes nothing fixes it, and in that case it is the broadcaster’s fault, not a faulty signal.
Are you feeding the audio into a different device, like a home audio system or stereo? And are you feeding the audio from the cable box or the TV? I’ve found syncing issues with some cable feeds and all laserdisc and DVD playback (though not Blu Ray) when I have the audio going straight from the cable or DVD player to a separate audio device, with video going to my TV. Apparently my TV was slightly lagging while displaying NTSC or heavily compressed HD cable feeds, while the audio just played merrily as it came through, resulting in a split-second, but very annoying effect.
The problem cleared up when I realized the TV itself had an audio out, and I allowed it to feed audio to my home audio system. Apparently the TV is able to sync up the outgoing audio with the video playback.
The audio being slightly out of sync with the video is something I’ve noticed on digital that I don’t recall ever seeing on analog.
I’m guessing that maybe the audio and the video are sent in separate packets, causing a differential in any lag that occurs when there’s a high network load. I have Comcast, and their cables carry a lot more than just TV content.
You would think the software would sync things up perfectly, but that may not be possible if there’s too big a difference in arrival time.
It’s something that bothers the hell out of me too, and the explanation/excuse from DirecTV always changes.
However, I used to see it very occasionally on analog TV, and one particular instance stands out in my memory because it was a broadcast of a program that mattered to me, and the A/V mismatch was so severe.
Mid 70’s, Sony TV with rabbit ears antenna. KPBS San Diego. The program was music by Bach, performed on various instruments by various artists. Audio-Video were out of synch for the entire hour. I even called the station to complain about it.
That’s one way to screw things up, but as I said it happens with OTA TV as well, with only a TV with built-in speakers and an antenna. If it happens all the time, the former is the most likely. If it only happens some of the time, tthe latter is the most likely.
ETA—also, note that the exact opposite synch problems are happening with you compared to the OP.
In my experience, out of sync generally occurs when there is additional video processing going on. Things like scaling to a different resolution or deinterlacing an interlaced signal like SD 480i or HD 1080i. But that means that the video lags, not the audio as in the OP. Audio processing could cause audio to lag, but I think this might be more common at the signal source (or last point of processing - which could be the cable provider).
Nope. This might be an issue with IPTV, but I don’t think Comcast is doing that. Each ideo channel is separate from the regular Internet packets - which actually occupy their own channel(s).