This topic

Delay in live sports

alfiep212 — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 21:05:52 GMT

Signed up to BT Sport to watch CL games live, but to my surprise, there is a significant delay in the broadcast, around 40 seconds. Why is this and can it be fixed? If not, I am going to cancel, it's not worth paying £25 and still get this kind of delay in live sports, that's unacceptable

Re: Delay in live sports

DarrenDev — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 22:15:57 GMT

This is normal for internet "over the top" streaming I'm afraid @alfiep212
It's only a few seconds on the BT TV box (delivered over multicast) but internet streaming has a lot more processing to make it available to all devices at all broadband speeds.

Re: Delay in live sports

Les-Gibson — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 22:38:42 GMT

@DarrenDevwrote:
This is normal for internet "over the top" streaming I'm afraid @alfiep212
It's only a few seconds on the BT TV box (delivered over multicast) but internet streaming has a lot more processing to make it available to all devices at all broadband speeds.

I have to disagree with you there Darren.

I have done a comparison between watching tennis on my laptop on Amazon Prime and watching it on the Prime Video app on my Youview box and my laptop is 45 - 50 seconds ahead of my Youview box.

As I'm sure you know, Multicast is not used in either case so why such a large time difference?

Re: Delay in live sports

DarrenDev — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 22:46:48 GMT

Both of those will be behind the live stream though - one is just much further behind than the other.
How far a player is behind depends on the player, the platform, the implementation, and the distribution.
BT Sport is distributed in at least 10 different formats that I can think of off the top of my head - they each behave differently based on what the target hardware and software is capable of.

Re: Delay in live sports

alfiep212 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 19:56:21 GMT

Yeah fine, I am not a tech expert, but the whatever the excuse is, this kind of delay is not worth £25 per month

Re: Delay in live sports

NigelB72 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 21:32:46 GMT

@alfiep212 you do realise that sky is also behind in its live broadcast don't you? Every single sport that's broadcast live is slightly behind the actual live event by a few seconds. This is simply down to physics and until satellite uplinks, encoding and the downstream links work at close to the speed of lights it'll always be the case. .

Re: Delay in live sports

alfiep212 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 21:54:48 GMT

And do you realise that a 40+ seconds delay is not the same as a delay of "a few seconds" ?

Re: Delay in live sports

gomezz — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 22:09:25 GMT

Curious as to *why* a transmission delay to live coverage is that important to you?

Re: Delay in live sports

alfiep212 — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:59:33 GMT

Because that's what I expect when I pay £25 a month. If 40+ seconds of delay is not a big deal, then why not 4 minutes, or 40 minutes, who cares as long as I get to watch the game, am I right?

Re: Delay in live sports

NigelB72 — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 19:35:09 GMT

@alfiep212 just out of interest, are you watching the enhanced feed with manager mode because that has a noticeable delay over the normal feed due to the additional encoding needed for the added features... The normal feed via the app is only a couple of seconds behind the Multicast channel on BT TV. I know this because I watch most games via the Youview box on the multicast channel but I watch the games in Ultimate because the Youview box doesn't support HDR

Re: Delay in live sports

alfiep212 — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 20:07:30 GMT

I'm not watching the enhanced feed

Re: Delay in live sports

DarrenDev — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 20:16:39 GMT

What are you using as your reference @alfiep212 ? i.e. how do you know that it's 40 seconds behind live?

Also, are you saying you'd rather not watch the match at all, than watch it slightly delayed?

One other comment I will make is that we're currently testing a new stream for the channels that will decrease the delay by almost 40% - from an average 40 seconds, to around 25. We estimate this to start being available across most platforms in the next 4-6 weeks - you've not mentioned which platform you're watching on.

Re: Delay in live sports

redarmy22 — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 17:32:14 GMT

@DarrenDev Jumping in on this...I am intrigued.

I currently watch BT 4K HDR via Chromecast Ultimate - the PQ is amazing, but the delay is killing me as I enjoy watching along with others who have BT on Sky. I notice the delay is approx 30 secs vs Sky on satellite. I know for some the 30s is minor, but for me, it can be quite a big deal!

Now I am technical enough to know that no IP delivery method is going to match Sky satellite, but is there any other option to keep the 4K HDR and reduce latency/delay? I don't want to have to switch to Sky and lose 4K HDR. I notice that Chromecast Ultra is actually 3-4 seconds behind the iOS app, going from iOSapp >Chromecast Ultra seems to add an additional delay which doesn't make sense to me.

P.s If there is any way to help beta test these new lower delay streams - I would bite your arm off. 🙂

Re: Delay in live sports

gspearson — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 17:40:24 GMT

These days you can't even set your clock by the radio. My radio-controlled clocks are usually at at least a minute ahead of Big Ben via DAB compared to FM. However, as time is relative...

Re: Delay in live sports

DarrenDev — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 17:44:42 GMT

With HDR, no - there's currently no option available. You can get BT Sport in 4K on BT TV over multicast, which has a lower latency, but you'll lose HDR with the latest publicly available box.
If you stop/start/stop the stream on Chromecast multiple times, you'll find that the latency is different each time, and can vary by up to 10 seconds. This is because our content is mostly delivered in 10 second chunks and the player will start from the beginning of the chunk it's currently on.

You're already beta testing these new lower delay streams - you just didn't know it. 🙂 We switch back and forth between the new streams and the old ones on different channels at different times of the day as we test them all ready to switch across permanently. ESPN is currently running the new streams.

Re: Delay in live sports

redarmy22 — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 17:58:19 GMT

@DarrenDev Interesting to note regarding the 10 sec chunks on Chromecast - it's not much, but it will help.

Thanks for the quick reply - much appreciated. Feature request - please get a native LG tvOS app out so I can ditch my CC ultra. 🙂

Re: Delay in live sports

gomezz — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 20:22:00 GMT

@gspearson I think you need to check the syncing of your clocks. Mine are only about two seconds ahead of DAB.

Re: Delay in live sports

alfiep212 — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 19:48:54 GMT

FlashScore, or any other sport results app.

Yes, I'd rather not watch it if it's delayed by 40+ seconds, for me that's more than slightly.#

My main issue is, I only signed up to BT online to watch the knockout phase of CL + EL, nothing else. So I feel like £20 is not a good value to watch just these matches with this kind of delay

Re: Delay in live sports

gomezz — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 20:24:18 GMT

Using a sports results app or following social media while watching live sport is never a good idea.

Re: Delay in live sports

alfiep212 — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 20:01:28 GMT

"Recognized Expert"... incredible