[time-nuts] New Years Eve TV countdown

[Rex]

TV doesn't seem to care about time sync much these days. It also depends 
a lot on the path getting to you,

I get most of my TV via satellite (Dish network). The receiver I have 
also can get OTA. I have happened to notice, once, that I had a local 
channel on two TVs. One was receiving the local via satellite and one 
was tuned to OTA local broadcast. The satellite was many seconds (at 
least 5, probably more) behind the OTA. I walked from one room to the 
other and had a brief period of deja vu. Hmm, just occurred to me, an 
earphone on the early one while watching the later one with friends 
would make you a living room Jeopardy game show super star.

But that satellite delay all makes sense.

One thing annoys me though. Many channels don't care much about start 
and stop times. If I program something to record using the schedule, 
often I miss the end of it. They frequently go over the half-hour or 
hour mark by a minute or two. Occasionally they complicate it more by 
starting a show a little early too. That irks me.

But for New Years, I didn't try to measure anything exactly, but I know 
they were off by about 3 hrs. I live in California. I was watching New 
York's events on my TV and the ball dropped at about midnight local 
time. I am enough of a time nut to know that should have happened at 9 
PM local time.

See, you just can't trust the media for accuracy these days.


On 12/31/2014 11:23 PM, David J Taylor wrote:
> The local ABC network affiliate WJLA in Washington DC was approximately 4
> seconds behind WWV in their on-screen countdown clock for New Year's 
> eve. The
> local NBC affiliate's clock was about 8 seconds late when I checked 
> them at
> two minutes before midnight. Happy New Year!
>
> Dan Schultz N8FGV
> ====================================
>
> Dan,
>
> I think you just illustrated the delays in digital TV transmission.  
> When watching events from abroad (e.g. F1 races) where precise timing 
> is available, I typically see a delay of 7-8-9-10 seconds, depending 
> on the location.  That is likely a delay to the studio, and then delay 
> through Sky satellite TV.  The BBC here no longer shows a clock, 
> perhaps partially for that reason.
>
> At least there was no leap -second to confuse things!
>
> Happy New Year!
>
> 73,
> David GM8ARV