I was in the gym tonight, watching CNN as I normally do while working out. Tonight, of course, they had the Impeachment Investigations, and they were on all three major networks as well as CNN. After watching for a bit, I noticed that the images weren’t in synch. There was a different time delay for each network. I could tell by watching any time the speaker moved his head in a peculiar way. It would appear first on ABC, then on CNN, then on CBS, and finally on NBC. Clearly NBC had the longest time delay, for some reason. Anyone know why there was such a palpably long delay between the event and its showing up on TV? There was a difference of about a second between each of the successive networks, so there were three seconds between ABC and CBS.
Could the delays be merely random? Chosen by each network long ago? Or just delays in the circuitry, nothing intentional? Much digital transmission nowadays is of the store&forward type, unlike analog signals.
Our local public access TV has about a 5 sec delay between the signal we send to the cable company and the time it arrives at the customer. We (the station) have no control over this; it just is.
I was actually at the hearings today (no, I wasn’t testifying) There was super strict security in effect. Perhaps there could have been a delay of a couple seconds in case there was a disruption. Everyone was being watched very carefully.
It’s mostly delays in the circuitry. It’s actually become worse as digital transmission has replaced analog. The original sound/image has to be converted and coded at the camera, then at the microwave dish on the truck, again at the studio, then at the satellite dish, the cable end, your home cable box and finally converted in your TV back into an analog signal.
Heck, the signal my Roku puts out lags a full 60 seconds behind my cable box, which lags behind the over-the-air signal from my local TV stations.
I was once watching a football game at my health club while working out on a stationary bike. I found that the game was being shown on two different channels. Since I was the only one (or one of the few) watching TV at the time, I put a TV on each channel. It wasn’t long before I noticed that there was about a four second delay between the two channels. So I watched the channel that was ahead and then, if I wanted an instant replay, immediately switched to the other channel. Worked quite well as long as I remembered to switch back to the ahead TV between plays.
Just before Thanksgiving, I went to the emergency room with my wife after she broke her leg. She was lying on a bed/stretcher thing in an area that could be isolated with curtains. TV screens were mounted up high. I could see both the one for her and the one for the man in the next area over. Both were on CNN. They were obviously out of sync by about a second or two. That had to have been some effect of the local circuitry it would seem.
This is the right answer. It’s encoding delay. The different networks will all have slightly different transmission configurations with different numbers of encode/decode steps. Each of those steps take a little time.
But is it ONLY encoding delay? I thought networks broadcasting live would build in a couple extra seconds so they can cut off the transmission if something happens. Maybe that only applies to their own news studio broadcasts, or do they not even do that?
Not necessarily. Delay technology is just one more thing that can potentially screw up, so the networks normally only do it if they think there’s a bigger potential screwup that can happen. A scripted news broadcast is expected to go off as scripted.
The FCC can fine broadcast networks (but not cable ones) if profanity (the 7 deadly words) are broadcast. But for live broadcasts of news legal events like court cases or hearings, it’s pretty unlikely the FCC would punish the station for what a witness said – the station would have a pretty strong defense.
I can have a program on in my living room, turn the TV on in my bedroom, and shortly, there will be a few seconds delay between the devices. I can only assume its due to the age of the older cable box in the bedroom.
Could it also be a delay lag to meet the “fixation” requirement in copyright law?
That is, by delaying it for a few seconds and recording it, the clip becomes subject to the networks’ copyright: not the actual words spoken by the Congress folks and the witnesses, but the recording of them, with the network logos and crawler at the bottom, identification of speakers, etc.
By fixing it for copyright purposes, no-one can re-broadcast that clip without the permission of the network.
I doubt that’s a factor. For one thing, the lag was negligible back in the analog transmission days, so it’s definitely an artifact of digital broadcasting.
Also, as you note, the networks have their logos and distinctive graphics embedded in the video, so it’s pretty tough for someone to deny they took it from a network broadcast.
The requirement of fixing the image was to establish copyright over the clips with the logos and so on. If there wasn’t fixing, then no copyright was generated and it didn’t matter about the added content -someone else could use it with impunity and no compensation to the network.