For today’s Giants-Phillies NLCS game 6, I’m using the same setup as described in my earlier post. It’s working moderately well and is of course miles better than the torture that is listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. The strangest thing is how the delay between GameDay audio and DirecTV seems to vary minute [...]

For today’s Giants-Phillies NLCS game 6, I’m using the same setup as described in my earlier post. It’s working moderately well and is of course miles better than the torture that is listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

The strangest thing is how the delay between GameDay audio and DirecTV seems to vary minute by minute. It’ll be steady at around nine seconds, then drop to seven and go up to twelve, all without any pauses in the audio stream. This means I have to keep my VNC window (all the audio processing software is on my old Dell Windows laptop) open and adjust the buffer in Radio Delay every so often. I can see several reasons for the delay between radio and TV and therefore between radio or GameDay and DirecTV, but I can’t quite grasp how the delay can vary in realtime without the stream dropping or pausing.

It seems to me that the overall delay is the result of the differing paths the audio and video take to reach me. If I was listening to KNBR on a standard AM radio, I’d be hearing the play-by-play in near-realtime; the signal goes from the ballpark, through KNBR’s onsite processing/uplink, to KNBR’s studio, to Sutro Tower and then to my radio. Most of that happens via broadcast, i.e. speed-of-light, and is point-to-point with no satellite bounce. Add another couple of steps for retransmission to MLB’s studio so it can go out over GameDay audio, and of course the streaming audio is affected by Internet speeds.

The video path is very different and a lot longer. It goes from the ballpark, through Fox Sports’ onsite processing/uplink (“the truck”) to Fox Sports’ central studio or processing center–I don’t know where that is, or if they use KTVU’s facilities–to KTVU’s studio in Oakland, to DirecTV’s facility in Denver and then via direct-broadcast satellite to me. There are at least two satellite round-trips there, possibly three depending on how the signal is sent from the Fox Sports truck to their central facility. The signal is encoded, decoded and re-encoded an unknown number of times during the whole process, and that takes time as well.

Most of the above is speculation based on some knowledge of how these things tend to work and a bit of research. I’d love to know any better and/or corrected details.

Why: http://dodgerhater.blogspot.com/2010/10/say-no-to-buck-mccarver-delay-radio.html How: http://www.botecomm.com/bote/radio/radiodelay.html (Radio Delay With MLB Gameday Streaming Audio, Virtual Audio Cable method). Yes, I paid the $20 to MLB for Gameday Audio streaming. I gave up on getting listenable sound from a portable AM radio into the laptop. It sounds fine from the radio, but as soon as it’s connected to the [...]

Why: http://dodgerhater.blogspot.com/2010/10/say-no-to-buck-mccarver-delay-radio.html
How: http://www.botecomm.com/bote/radio/radiodelay.html (Radio Delay With MLB Gameday Streaming Audio, Virtual Audio Cable method).

Yes, I paid the $20 to MLB for Gameday Audio streaming. I gave up on getting listenable sound from a portable AM radio into the laptop. It sounds fine from the radio, but as soon as it’s connected to the laptop there’s a huge amount of line noise and static. I think it’s coming from the TV equipment and being picked up by the audio cable, but I haven’t found a way to block it.

1. Install and start Virtual Audio Cable.
2. Start Radio Delay with input device set to Virtual Cable 1 and output device set to the computer’s audio device (e.g. SigmaTel Audio, etc).
3. Try playing a sound file on the computer. It should register on the “Input Device” side of Radio Delay, silently, and then playback through the “Output” side with audio.
4. Launch GameDay audio.
5. If the GameDay audio feed is playing without delay, stop and restart Radio Delay.

So far, with quite a bit of head-beating and hair-tearing, this is working. I am waiting for the actual game to start so I can sync audio and video. There’s a sixteen second (!!) delay from KNBR to DirecTV, but I don’t know how much of a delay there will be between GameDay Audio and DirecTV. I’ll update this post later with that information.

Update 1: The delay seems to vary between nine and eighteen seconds, probably because MLB’s Flash audio player seems to stutter, pause and catch up. Unfortunately, changing the buffer in Radio Delay causes the current buffer to be cleared, so it’s difficult to properly sync the audio to video. So far.

Posted here because it’s too long to Tweet and I dislike serializing Tweets. I’ve been a DIRECTV subscriber for around twelve years. Through all that time I’ve almost always been pleased with both the actual TV service and their customer service people. There has been the occasional hiccup, as you’d expect, but overall it’s been [...]

Posted here because it’s too long to Tweet and I dislike serializing Tweets.

I’ve been a DIRECTV subscriber for around twelve years. Through all that time I’ve almost always been pleased with both the actual TV service and their customer service people. There has been the occasional hiccup, as you’d expect, but overall it’s been great and I wouldn’t hesitate to strongly recommend the service. (In fact, if you’re considering it, click the “Contact Me” link on this page for a $100 referral credit.)

DIRECTV recently, some would say “finally” introduced their whole-home DVR service- essentially the same as the local share ability built in to TiVo since the beginning- and since I have two of their HD DVRs (one upstairs, one downstairs) and an ever-growing list of subscribed series, I decided to order it. Unlike TiVo networking, which is free except for customer-provided equipment, the DIRECTV service costs $3 per month plus installation. I have a very strong wireless-N network but apparently HD signals require more bandwidth so they install a hardwire network for the DVRs.

I called last Friday and had one of the single best customer service experiences in my life. The rep was friendly, knowledgable and very helpful. She got the service ordered, gave me a break on the installation charge and took care of a few other unrelated issues on my account. We scheduled the service installation to take place a week later, today, between 4 and 8 pm. All would be well and I was quite pleased.

This morning, I received a call from someone who, almost completely unintelligably, claimed to be the DIRECTV installer and said he wouldn’t be coming today because he “has no equipment.” That’s a direct quote. He’s a DIRECTV installer and he can’t make it because he “has no equipment.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I agreed to wait for his call next week when, presumably, he’d have some equipment. Then I got on the phone to DIRECTV customer service to find out what the hell was going on. The rep could only tell me that the appointment was still scheduled and she didn’t see anything to suggest that the installer wouldn’t be there as scheduled. She said she’d have “Dispatch” call me back shortly to confirm it.

Well, “Dispatch” never called and no installer ever showed. I blocked time for this today and it was wasted. I’m surprised and disappointed.

I’ll call back tomorrow, I guess, and try to reschedule. I will insist on a different installer because I will not allow the one I talked to this morning into my house.

Updates as events warrant.

The current contents of my to-do lists. Some of these things have been hanging on for months. I apologize for useful-only-to-me abbreviations. The to-do list TECHY STUFF Sync manager thingie fix MP guide hotel pages / menu structs MP mobile guide pages full MP CSS to mobile MP MP mobile mirror misc URLs write “welcome [...]

The current contents of my to-do lists. Some of these things have been hanging on for months. I apologize for useful-only-to-me abbreviations.

The to-do list

TECHY STUFF

• Sync manager thingie
• fix MP guide hotel pages / menu structs
• MP mobile guide pages
• full MP CSS to mobile MP
• MP mobile mirror misc URLs
• write “welcome to mobile MP” article
• @MP theme based on MP.com
• new countdown code in Pad
• new theme in Pad
• full Pad CSS to mobile Pad
• hack importing old updates
• add Pad mobile forum collapse
• sexybookmarks in Pad
• add ads to Pad mobile
• move social-network to rightnav
• MP menus (HTML5 “nav”)
• add intelligent URL detection to PCG
• improve Twitter box on MP main page: http://ukijs.org/
• automate/template MP DLR update hours/refurbs
• implement Twurl & OAuth for Tweet-from-CMS
• set up new external drive
• set up guest room media
• clean MBP keyboard
• migrate PIRR
• migrate Box of Kittens
• migrate MPA HOA blog
• fix GreaseMonkey script

GENERAL TODO

• update Craigslist glass post
• get car washed
• look into GTD or similar
• find reseller for car nose protector parts
• call XM
• call DirecTV
• laundry
• drop off dry cleaning
• cat boxes
• fill cat water dispensers
• check 401k funds

Buried in AP article about DirecTV’s quarterly results is this nugget of information: [CEO Chase] Carey said DirecTV will roll out a ‘whole-home’ digital video recording service starting in the second quarter that will enable customers to record programs on a DVR in one room and watch them in other areas of the house on [...]

Buried in AP article about DirecTV’s quarterly results is this nugget of information:

[CEO Chase] Carey said DirecTV will roll out a ‘whole-home’ digital video recording service starting in the second quarter that will enable customers to record programs on a DVR in one room and watch them in other areas of the house on TVs hooked up to linked non-DVR set-top boxes.

Well, it’s about time. TiVo (not DirecTiVo, just regular old TiVo) had this ages ago. Finally I’ll be able to record on the upstairs DVR and watch it downstairs or vice-versa. This should help with scheduling conflicts–I hope there is some sort of auto-conflict manager included with the new service.