BBC Time-Pips

No

Just like the TV soundtrack that is behind the radio on football commentaries.

Welcome to the wonderful world of digital. Its the same on TV. Why? beyond me, but I am a nerdish precision freak who gets obsessed to distraction over a digital or electronic clock that's a few seconds wrong. My kitchen has a clock on both microwave & cooker, both as accurate as next weeks weather forecast, I have to turn one off as they can never agree more that a few days.
My bedroom clock & wristwatch are accurate to millions of a second because they are tuned to an atomic clock at Rugby......Time Freak Nivarna.
But in total contrast I have a wind-up clock that is over 100 years old, gains a minute or five between wind ups, no problem, its real engineering living thing with a soul.

My understanding is that the digital broadcast is buffered to allow for seamless transmission even if there are short-term interruptions in the datastream - hence the lack of absolute synchronicity 'twixt analogue and digital at the receiving end. They are synchronous at the transmitting end.

Fraser

I enjoy the utter luxury of a lifestyle where I no longer need a watch with a minute finger. Indeed my friends maintain I get by using a time frame of dark versus light most of the time.

Yes, but it's effing nonsense for the BBC to transmit time pips over their digital broadcasts which they KNOW to be wrong.

Chaps

I have a very sad time fetish. I have a mechanical watch which gains 9 seconds every week and I cannot live with that inaccuracy.

Each morning I check it against the BST website and I adjust it, usually every two days. I did this even when I was retired, time is time and I need to be spot on.

Surprisingly my Grandfather clock only needs to be stopped for a couple of seconds at the end of each month.

My mantle clock from the 1950s is good for about 15 seconds a week and I adjust it at 8.00am every Sunday.

Regards

Mick

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry:
Chaps

I have a very sad time fetish. I have a mechanical watch which gains 9 seconds every week and I cannot live with that inaccuracy.

Each morning I check it against the BST website and I adjust it, usually every two days. I did this even when I was retired, time is time and I need to be spot on.

Surprisingly my Grandfather clock only needs to be stopped for a couple of seconds at the end of each month.

My mantle clock from the 1950s is good for about 15 seconds a week and I adjust it at 8.00am every Sunday.

Regards

Mick

And how much time must that palaver waste Mick?

When they go fully digital they will probably change it for terrestrial digital, but it depends where you get your digital from anyway.

If it is from the Sky signal it is delayed because of the time it takes for a signal to be sent to and then be broadcast back the distance between the earth and a satellite in geo-stationary orbit.

Perhaps another argument for FM to remain.

123

Just had the bill for servicing my Rolex. Now understand the origin of the expression "Time is money". Makes a recap seem positively good value.

Willy.

For the price of your service you could have bought a watch that keeps time.

I understand that the digital delay is also a function of the decoding circuits - we have two different makes of Sky boxes and there is a noticeable difference between them when the same program is being received on the two boxes.

quote:

we have two different makes of Sky boxes and there is a noticeable difference between them when the same program is being received on the two boxes

That's right. Which makes it impossible for them to allow for the delay, as it's different on different radios and online streams.

If I want to know the time I look at my mobile phone.

quote:

If it is from the Sky signal it is delayed because of the time it takes for a signal to be sent to and then be broadcast back the distance between the earth and a satellite in geo-stationary orbit.

hmmmmm.....yes, that's what I thought. But....

geo-stationary orbits must be about....20,000 km from the centre of the earth?

There and back is therefore about 40,000 km at c. 300,000 km per second, or about 1/8th of a second.

seems to me like there is a bigger delay elsewhere?

Or am I getting muddled up somehow?

Cheers

Don

quote:

If I want to know the time I look at my mobile phone.

unfortunaletly, my mobile interferes with the navigation and instrument landing systems in all the flying school's aircraft. So I have to switch the old mobile off and rely on the watch....very few training aircraft have a working clock!!! pathetic really.

Cheers

Don

From the BBC website.

quote:

Why is there a time delay of a second or two between digital and analogue radio broadcasts?

The delay is because the digital and analogue signals are sent in different ways. Analogue signals are transmitted direct, but digital signals are compressed before being transmitted and are then uncompressed by your TV and turned back into pictures and sound. It also takes longer to transmit digital signals to a satellite and back to the ground.

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

quote:

If I want to know the time I look at my mobile phone.

unfortunaletly, my mobile interferes with the navigation and instrument landing systems in all the flying school's aircraft. So I have to switch the old mobile off and rely on the watch....very few training aircraft have a working clock!!! pathetic really.

Cheers

Don

When flying my ipod takes over timekeeping duty from my mobile phone.

Willy

quote:

Originally posted by BigH47:
For the price of your service you could have bought a watch that keeps time.

Several

Willy.