How to eliminate problems in your home cinema setup

SOMETIMES, when technology takes a leap forward, it also takes two steps back. No-one ever used to worry about having to hook up a TV to an external speaker and then work out what to do when the sound went out of sync with the picture - but that is the reality of audio-video connectivity today.
Your TV and speakers don't always work in harmonyYour TV and speakers don't always work in harmony
Your TV and speakers don't always work in harmony

The problems are twofold: the introduction of extra components - typically for a surround sound setup - into our home entertainment systems, and the insistence by TV manufacturers of “processing” the picture to make it look better.

TV firms have different names for the processing technologies they use, and some of the cheaper options are barely worth they stickers they’re printed on, but all have one thing in common: the capacity to introduce a slight delay between the TV receiving the picture and displaying it on the screen.

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The delay shouldn’t be noticeable, but that’s not always the case. And the more bits of electronics you introduce into your system, the more the chances of the delay becoming very pronounced indeed.

That’s why most good TV’s, set-top boxes and AV receivers now have “lip sync” adjustments buried in their menus. These are especially useful in keeping the sound from your external speakers synchronised with that from the TV itself - but there are other steps you can take to reduce the chances of error.

The first of these is to consider how many of your TV’s “picture enhancements” you really need. Never mind that their virtues were plastered all over the screen when you bought it; the reality is that some do more harm than good. Pick your way through the menu system and turn them off, one by one - or experiment with turning on your TV’s Game Mode if it has one. This has the effect of cancelling out all the enhancements at once, to eliminate any possibility of “input lag”.

Next, try to reduce the number of interconnects between the components in your system. You can accomplish this by using your TV, not your AV receiver as the “hub” of your system, cabling your satellite box, Blu-ray player, games console and so on, into the back of your TV and then running a single cable to the receiver.

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If one of the HDMI sockets on your TV is labelled “ARC” or Audio Return Channel, this will have the added advantage of also sending sound from the TV’s built-in smart apps like Netflix and the iPlayer, to your receiver or soundbar, without any extra wiring. Otherwise, an optical cable from the TV to the receiver will do the same job.

Other options, if your connectivity is limited, is a standalone HDMI audio extractor, available online for around £25, which splits off the audio channel and sends it to an analogue amplifier. Don’t over-economise on this, though, as it too has the capacity to introduce lag into the system.

Lip sync issues are most common on high definition systems - common enough, in fact, for the BBC to have produced a test signal to measure the synchronisation scientifically - and if your problems are noticeable only occasionally, you shouldn’t overlook the possibility that the fault is at the broadcaster’s end, not yours. In a previous generation, they’d have flashed up a “do not adjust your set” caption - but the advice today is to adjust and don’t stop adjusting.

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