As I’ve been at home watching the World Cup, I switch back and forth between the English language broadcasts on ESPN and the Spanish language ones on Univision.
I’ve noticed that Univision’s broadcast is usually 7-10 seconds ahead of ESPN’s?
Any ideas on why this would occur?
Many TV and radio broadcasts will introduce a 7-10 second delay into their signal for various purposes. If something happens during the broadcast (such as a commentator saying a naughty word) they can dump out of the delay before the naughty bit gets on the air.
Even just within the UK I’ve noticed that switching between a BBC signal transmitted in analogue over the air and a digital feed of the same channel via my cable supplier can be a second or two out. Factor in a foreign broadcaster originating the coverage and a couple of satellite links, longer delays hardly seem surprising. Different bufferings are only noticable if you flick between them, so why shouldn’t different channels exploit them differently as per their available resources.
I think Bonzer may be on the right track. I do use digital cable and some channels just don’t appear on the screen right away anyway when I change to them.
It makes tough on an inveterate channel switcher.
One time I was speaking to my brother on the phone. I was in California. He was in St. Louis. We were watching the same hockey game, but I was watching on Fox and he was watching on ESPN. His feed of the game was about a second or two ahead of mine.
I figured that out when he reacted to a goal much faster than I did.
When I was watching the US-Portugal game last night, it seemed like the commentator was slightly ahead of the action. Only by a fraction of a second, but it was still noticeable.
I would think its to give the people who are manipulating the feeds a bit of breather time so they dont do anything stupid. Either that or it is a hardware delay due to using different sats or something.
Signals can bounce an amazing number of times via satellite. Each one adds a bit. Just tonight, my SO was watching Her Team on TV and listening on radio. You could hear the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt five seconds before you see it. Makes the announcers look prescient. “Foul ball in the bleachers.” and then the batter hits the ball.
In regard to the audio feed being ahead of the video, I didn’t notice it so much in the US-Portugal game, but I really did notice it in the game broadcast Sunday afternoon on ABC (I think it was England playing). It seemed the audio was at least half a second ahead of the video, enough so that it kind of ruined it by hearing, “Goal” from the broadcaster before the ball was in the goal. It also seemed that just the announcers were the only audio ahead of the video, the stuff recorded on the field (player’s voices, ball being kicked) seemed to match up.
I am wondering though why the ESPN video feed looks so much worse than the Univision feed. I don’t know if I would really notice the ESPN feed if I didn’t see the Univision one, but the Univision video is much brighter, clearer, and vivid, while the ESPN one looks all muddy and dark. I’m not really sure why this is since they are both using the same video shot out of Korea and Japan, this is evident in the delay, all the camera cuts and angles are the same, I’m guessing provided to broadcasters around the world. There must be something ESPN does to make their video look worse by the time it gets out.