Why is content from cable/satellite TV always in sync on multiple TVs, but two iPads with the same stream are pretty much out of sync?
In: Technology
Imagine a stage with one person talking in front of a large audience. It’s up to each member of the audience to pay attention to make sure to hear what they say. The ones in the furthest back might not hear every single word, but they still get most of it, and there’s no way for every listener to make the speaker slow down or repeat the words that they didn’t hear.
Now imagine the same number of listeners, but instead of only one speaker there’s one speaker for every listener. Here it’s critical to make sure that every listener hears every single word the speakers say, so the listener repeats every word to the speaker, one by one, so that the speaker can make sure they heard it. If the listener didn’t hear it, or had to e.g sneeze for a second, they ask their speaker to repeat themselves, and thus fall slightly behind all the other listeners and speakers. Eventually one listener could fall behind so much that they’re way behind all other listeners, so the speaker “skips ahead” to wherever all other(or at least most other) speakers are right now, which means that the listener occasionally miss out on some of the content.
The first is the TV signal being broadcast to TVs; the broadcast does not make sure that all TVs pick up everything or are synced. The second is a livestream where the internet “speaker”(internet protocol) makes sure that the listener(the web browser e.g an iPad streaming Twitch or a news stream) received everything, which is why you can see the stream stutter or lag behind sometimes, a short “pause” if you will, but after too much lag it could skip seconds or even minutes ahead to catch-up.
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