A question about Sound Speed

I have Futurama on DVD, but today i was watching an episode on Sky One. Now i suddenly noticed how much slower the sound was compared to the DVD. For example the voices were a lot slower and a little lower than usual, and the theme tune was especially slow.

Does anyone know why this might be? Perhaps the syndication copies are always badly done?

I notice that the copies that Sky One show are very more American-y NTSC style than the DVD's, though Channel 4 has the same style as the DVD. I've also noticed that Sky One can occassionally have the US certificates every now and again, i.e. TVPG etc.

The same goes for The Simpsons, Sky gets rather American copies, but when they're shown on Channel 4 they look more normal, though this only applies to newer episodes, usually made within the last 5 years.

I noticed that. They are very grainy compared to the Channel 4 copies even though they are computer animated.

I've also noticed the TVPG symbols on some of them sometimes too. I wonder why they get such knackered copies.

Sky & Freeview broadcasts use encoding methods similar to that of DVD's and Downloads. If you've ever had lots of applications open demanding resources from your PC you can see that the speed of video & sound can be altered. The same applies to your Digital TV's and Set-top boxes. Although your boxes won't be trying to check your e-mail and chat on TV Forum... but you never know.

I'm not hugely technical over set-top boxes but I do know that channels can appear to slow down and lag behind what's actually being broadcast.

The best advice if this happens is to turn the box off and back on.

I've got an old Pace sky digital box from 1998 (with the old sky logo). It's very slow, and sometimes, but not often, the sound will slip out of sync with the picture.

Sometimes just switching channel for a moment will resolve the problem.

You DO need to switch to a channel on a different transponder, however, to force the box to re-sync.

That just dosen't sound like it though. Surely if this were the case i would have the same problem on Channel Four? I watch that on Sky and don't get this problem.

To be realistic if you were to switch to another channel when it's doing it your not necessarily going to notice if it is also slower or faster than what you were watching.

Turn your box off at the wall, or change transponder as has been said.

STOP this transponder rubbish now! The reason for the difference is SKY One using NTSC versions (24fps at 3:2 pulldown) converted to PAL, whereas Channel 4 & The DVDs are sped up to 25fps to PAL. Both are standard practice, it just depends where SKY & Channel 4 get their copies from. The speeding up is a complicated process because the footage originates from NTSC video- in involves removing the extra fields added by the 3:2 pulldown to get it down from 60fps to 48fps, then speeding it up to 50fps for PAL. SKY's prints will be direct transfers from the NTSC masters.

Now that sounds more believable.

Big Brother: Believe me, i have an annoying habit of noticing the small things, and i do notice that Channel Four sounds completely fine on Sky. You can tell the difference on Sky One especially on the theme tune, as it's quite a fast theme, yet the Sky One copies really slow it down.

Yes but it's hardly likely that the same programme will be running on a different channel at the same time so you wouldn't notice.

And Mr STOP there, the outcomes explained here do indeed exist and from what's been described could well be what's happening. RUDE.

It's not what's hapenning though. In fact, the TVPG logos on SKY One give away the fact they're NTSC transfers, rather than the sped up to 25fps ones Channel 4 are using.