Yeah, they're only about 1 second behind GMT/BST time. I think Ceefax is also slightly delayed when you're viewing it on SkyDig, but not on terresterial TV.
MG
MikeG
You would've thought they'd know that and correct it. I mean they have the pips 1 second earlier than usual - if you know what I mean.
MM
Matt Morelli
Digital Radio is exactely 2 seconds behind. Dunno if this is correct for tv. I would have thought so.
There is actually a delay on terrestrial TV too.
BBC Wales is always about 1 second behind BBC NW.
You will find that the news networks do occasionally slow themselves down.
I know that Sky have done this on a number of occasions. For example, Sky were feeding in live pictures of the Paddington crash and IIRC they delayed the feed by a few seconds so that if anything awful came on it could be swiftly removed.
Under normal conditions you will find there isn't a great difference between any of the platforms.
BB
BBC Choice
The delay on certain DSat channels is different from the delay on others in some cases: BBC ONE DSat is closer to analogue than Channel 4 DSat is etc
Channel Four DSat is interesting when it comes to delays on digital... The delay on satellite is different depending on which satellite feed you are watching (and this is, like the BBC One National variation, post code dependent!) The different regions are broadcast with a small time delay to aid the compression system used by C4 (statmux)
Not many people realise this, but Channel Four is actually regionalised. The shows are the same, but the ADVERTS aren't. Originally the local ITV companies inserted adverts locally for C4 (as they paid for C4 but kept the advertising money!) , but when ITV and C4 became technically more separate, C4 took responsibility for advertising playout, but they wished to retain the ability to advertise semi-regionally. They created SIX (I think) analogue regions (London, England, Midlands, North, Ulster, Scotland... England was the South and South West - no Wales cos they got S4C instead)
When C4 launched on DSat they only initially broadcast one version. However as more and more people started to watch DSat, it became important to make sure that the adverts were correct in each region, regardless of whether you were watching satellite or terrestrial. This change co-incided with E4 and the extra Film Four channels, when C4 stopped being broadcast by Sky and got their own transponder on DSat.
To squeeze the FIVE C4 regions (I think London and England have been merged?) plus E4, E4 Interactive, F4, F4+1, F4W/E into one transponder they use a technique called statmux. This shares space between channels on the basis of how much data they need second by second to broadcast a decent picture (If C4 is showing fast moving sport, but F4 a slow paced B&W film, C4 can 'borrow' data from F4 to keep the C4 picture quality up)
However all the C4s are broadcasting the same material much of the time (the programmes) and only differ at the adverts. This would mean that teh five C4s would all have the same data requirements and stat mux would not work very well (causing a drop in picture quality) To make the channels more different to each other a small amount of delay has been introduced into the various regions - so they are out of sync with each other by a number of seconds...
Unfortunately this only helps a bit - and if you watch C4 on DSat you will notice that the picture quality has really dropped since this change (the grass on the cricket recently looked terrible)
