Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sun, 23 Sep 2012 04:10:47 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Fri, 7 Sep 2012 14:57:54 -0700 (PDT), Amanda Riphnykhazova
wrote:
(... too lazy to word wrap...)

Try turning off the Dolby digital audio when using the Toslink. Dolby
can add about 0.5 seconds delay. DTS audio might have less of a delay
and is worth trying. Toslink does NOT have a lip sync specification
because there is no associated video channel. That might explain why
Panasonic isn't very responsive to the problem. If you want tolerable
(not perfect) lip sync, HDMI 1.3 and 1.4 are the only interfaces with
a functional spec.

I never thought about this before.

Does that mean that any old surround sound-ish system could in theory have
audio horribly lagged and off from the video from the source such a DVD?

I don't know. I've never tried surround sound on a DVD video
playback, mostly because all my boxes are ordinary stereo. No 5.1
anywhere. Theoretically, the lip sync could be a problem because
there are no specs. The bulk of the delay is not in the audio system.
It's in the video processing. Some detail:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/875004/does-hdmi-1-3-fix-lip-sync-issues

I'm still living in the past with a 1998 sony DVP S500D DVD player and
some sort of equally old Technics sourround sound decoder. They connect
with some sort of toslink-ish fiber optic cable, and pretty much work with
anything but the movie Hellraiser 2.

I just added WD Live media player box to the museum of 1990s home thatre
and it mostly works with the same surround sound decoder, but will freeze
things up requiring a reboot from time to time. I've not noticed audio
sync problems, and I watch video over component video or svideo with the
DVD player and HDMI to a projector with the WD live box. I've never used
audio over HDMI, and have no idea where you'd even intercept the audio
signals and listen to them in the first place.

Incidentally, my DirecTV R16/300 composite video is noticeably out of
sync with the audio. However, the component video output is fairly
close. My guess(tm) is that DTV optimized it for component video
assuming that nobody will be using composite video. The R16/300
doesn't have HDMI.

I've noticed there are delay settings on most audio decodes but, I've not
noticed or though about there being sync issues with the audio as a whole.

The only ones that I've seen that are close use HDMI 1.3.

MiniDV was another story, and a complete waste of my time when I used it.

I missed that one.

crappy videotape format with unsynced audio and video streams on the same
tape. Audio could and would drift from the video if you played the tapes
back on a computer, but from the analog ports on a player, they were
always OK.

I'm still trying to figure out how that was even possible, but it was, and
the non-consumer DV tape formats never had that problem as they had some
sort of time sync info between the streams.