What is lag and why does the lens have a lag on TV?

The lag, or lag, caused by live broadcasts greatly disrupts the experience when watching football matches

You’ve probably come across a rather annoying situation: you were watching a football match on TV and, when your team – or the opponent – was about to attack, you heard the cry of a goal in the neighborhood, only to see a few seconds later the goal, in fact, on the screen.

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But why this delay? Why do some TVs show moments of live programming before others? Rest assured, there’s a technical explanation for why this happens, but there’s no specific problem with your TV, so come figure out what’s causing this lag.

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What causes the delay between broadcast and home viewing?

The big “bad” of live broadcasts — such as football matches or sports in general — is the delay between the official broadcast and reception at the viewer’s home. This time difference is caused by the decoding of the signal, which goes through some additional steps after the “release” of the signal.

Explaining in simpler terms, when a football match, for example, is being filmed and broadcast live, this signal comes ‘purely’ to your home, so the image needs to be ‘processed’ to be displayed on your TV. This treatment is usually done by TV receivers, which are those devices that you get from your cable TV operator or other converters of the type.

The delay occurs because this equipment needs to decode the received signal so that the picture and sound can be displayed on the screen. It is as if he has received an encrypted package and needs to unzip it to show the contents. This process is usually quick, but still not that immediate.

The same happens in cases where there is a digital TV converter connected to the TV or built directly into it, since this device also needs to decode the signal before displaying it.

Some time ago, before all the signal in Brazil was digital, i.e. when it was still analog TV, the delivery of the signal was almost instantaneous, i.e. in real time. This happened precisely because there was no intermediary for image processing, no additional devices for decoding the signal.

In addition to all these types of broadcasts, there is still one that suffers even more from lag, and that is the content viewed by streaming services. In Brazil, the most popular platforms with sports content are Globoplay — and other derivatives of Grupo Globo —, Star Plus and HBO Max.

The reason for the delay in this case is even more obvious – the Internet connection. As much as your package is more advanced, with speeds over 500 Gbps, decoding these transmissions takes even longer and in some cases, the delay can reach around 5 seconds, which already greatly hampers the experience.

What to do to reduce the transmission delay?

Currently, ordinary digital TV suffers the least from transmission lag. All the latest TV models — released since at least 2010 — already have a digital converter box built in, so you don’t need any additional equipment, other than the antenna itself, to broadcast open channels.

In this way, if you want to watch the matches broadcast on a free-to-air channel, the best way is to connect the digital antenna directly to the TV, without any additional receiver or converter. We have already written a text showing you the best digital antenna to buy in 2022, so you can choose any of these models to help you capture the signal.

Unfortunately there is nothing to do if the transmission is through a paid channel, since you need your operator’s receiver, which is the device provided by the company. Similarly, if you’re going to be watching a game online – on a streaming service – there’s no way to “work around” the lag.

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Source: Terra

Camila

Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.