Chrissie Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 For a couple of weeks now I have found that many UK programmes (received via Sky digibox) have a slight lag between sound and vision. (Mouths lag behind sound.) OH doesn't notice it but it's driving me mad! Anyone else got it?Is it just a fact of life or is it caused by some misalignment of our dish?Chrissie (81) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maricopa Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 Have you tried disconnecting the box from the mains for 10 seconds, that often clears most faults (including this one)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissie Posted January 7, 2009 Author Share Posted January 7, 2009 No! I do that for other faults and it never occurred to me for this one [:$] - will try tomorrow morning.Chrissie (81) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 A couple of my boxes here offshore suffer from this on occasion and just a prod of the On/Off button is sufficient to restore normal service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Théière Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 I get that in the UK on freeview as well as sky in france, the two match themselves back up after a minute or two.Hope Martin answers this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin963 Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Well Martin can't shed any more light on this than what's already been said.There can be quite a number of causes for the problem. Most of them can be cured by a partial or full depower of the box. If that doesn't do the trick and the problem goes on and on then it's an indicator that the box is failing.In analogue days sync was rarely a problem, and if it was it was generally the broadcaster that had done something silly. With digital, the signal chain is not instantaneous, there are several litle "resevoirs" or buffer-zones which cope with fluctuations in the demand for "space" in the bitstream, in the case of the picture signal for example a single newsreader in a studio consumes much less capacity in the transmission system than say an action shot of a car crashing off a road down a mountainside. To prevent your final picture "freezing" periodically all sorts of tricks are employed, and some of these involve these "delay-resevoirs" for want of a better non-tech word, so that the system has capacity-in-reserve to cope with sudden demands on its abilities.Set top boxes are more "computer" than "TV" and any computer starts to slow down if it tries to do too much or if a bit of something it doesn't like gets stuck in its "virtual insides". For an STB that can lead to a delay (picture or sound) becoming ingrained in the box until you take pity on it and depower it. Goodness knows why these boxes don't have some sort of automatic reset but they are built to a price and I don't know any box that actually works perfectly indefinitely (none of ours do, and even an expensive Nokia DTT box has to have its plug actually pulled from the wall once a week to reset it).Sometimes the sync problems seem to be worse if the box is somewhere hot (small cupboard, on top of another warm bit of tech kit) and sometimes as I say they eventually fail for good if the problem becomes serious. And of course poor signal can set off these problems, although in my experience you notice pixellation and freezes much sooner than sync problems.It's another reason why - aesthetics and tidyness apart - I'd always buy a TV and decoder box(es) as separate units; if you buy an integrated TV and the digital tuner fails or plays up you're going to have to buy a replacement outboard box or pay for very expensive internal repairs anyway (and probably a few people would scrap the whole thing rather than do that).Sorry, I've waffled a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooperlola Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 I did suffer similar-souding sync problems myself once. They turned out to have been caused by my own mis-wiring of my surround system so that it was broadcasting the sound slightly behind the picture. Do you by any chance have a seperate sound system, or do you just use the telly's speakers? If the former, then could it be that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissie Posted January 8, 2009 Author Share Posted January 8, 2009 Of course, this morning all channels are perfectly in sync, so haven't tried to re-start. Interesting to notice, when looking for out-of-sync speakers, how much Tv involves voiceovers, cartoon characters, movies with apparently no dialogue, wildlife progs with background music etc etc! Took me ages to find real people actually talking!Chrissie (81) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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