Thursday, June 22, 2006

live HDTV sucks


i was in berkeley watching the first brazil game of the world cup a week ago. it was displayed on a beautiful hdtv in the front of the bar, and, if you arrived late, on a normal tv in the back of the bar.

so, brazil's applying some pressure when suddenly i hear this scream from the back of the bar. i turn around and see people cheering and clapping and i'm wondering: "what game are they watching?" suddenly i turn back to my tv and kaka has scored
(pictured above celebrating the goal).

it turns out that the hdtv broadcast has a few second delay compared to the regular broadcast! the back of the bar knew about the goal before me! i thought this only happened in different solar systems where the exploding star reaches me years later! this completely blows. there's no point watching if i can just wait and listen for the people behind me.

mihai pointed me to an article about this on bbc. supposedly the bbc spokesperson advises that people shut their windows so they can't hear celebrations from normal tv watchers. ridiculous. that is not a solution. live hdtv sucks!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have noticed this too with digital TV. Her in Iceland the World Cup is only broadcasted digitally, and you have to have this special box to receive the signal. However, if you use the box to watch channels that are also broadcasted with analog signals you notice about a 2 second delay when you switch back and forth. But since there is no analog broadcasting of the WC this doesn't matter...

I guess digital technology sucks.... One of these days we'll witness the rebirth of analog technology.....

Anonymous said...

In London, the BBC has deployed big screens outside for the games. So I guess that is why they suggest keeping the windows closed.

om said...

oh man, the bbc had such good intentions deploying tvs outside... and they've hosed hdtv owners!

hopefully they fix this bug. i guess there's so much data being streamed with hdtv that a lag makes some sense. but that's just so frustrating.

Anonymous said...

It's not a bug... it's a feature. It lets you cover the eyes of your children before Janet's breasts come popping out.

But the feature will gracefully degrade as HDTV ubiquity reaches 100%.

twm said...

not about HGTV, just about football.

Good games though brazil is a bit sloppy! I love kaka! Looking forward to argentina vs. germany!!

Anonymous said...

Oh man, that truly sucks!

I've noticed a similar thing here. I can watch both Finnish and Swedish television, and when they're showing the same live event (like icehockey games and the Eurovision song contest) there is a slight difference between the two channels. Probably not more than a second though.

Followers