No idea, and I may have been wrong in saying that Standard Defintion always lags behind HD. It is that way on my TV, and any that I've seen, but from a quick search, it looks as if it can go either way. In any case it suggests that there are lags out there and there is not much chance that you are actually seeing anything 'live'.
Not on my TV they aren't. I'm sitting here surfing between the two and nearly every time HD is faster. In fact, with TNT there is around a 15-20sec lag. I can watch a scene on HD, switch to SD and wait 15secs for the same scene to develop.....and yes, I do know what I'm doing.
why anything that goes thru a satellite is on roughly 7 second delay... is it due to physics or some other explanation?
I have COMCAST and am also in the Bay Area. You have to be mindful of the fact that there is a sizeable delay between being on a digital cable modem ( that Comcast has been switching everyone to ) vs simply splicing into the Comcast line somewhere in your home. My 2 TV's that are powered by the Comcast Digital modem now allow for Channels 75 down to 2 to be Digital now. They are significantly delayed from what my Comcast cable connection is doing in my home office ( sans the digital modem ).
True. I confirm this every time I watch a game down at my local sports bar. The delay is significant enough to be CHEERING for a TD on one side of the bar, while everyone looking at the HDTV telecast is still waiting for the play to develop!
That's a good question. The round trip delay to a GSO satellite is 240-280 ms (depending on just where the satellite is). That's about 1/4 second. Even assuming several hops and delays in signal processing, I can't come up with anything near 7 seconds for "anything that goes thru a satellite."
The 240-280 ms delay is common knowledge. There must be additional delays built in... Because this "7 second" issue is common knowledge to every sports fan. I often watch TV sports AND listen to the radio broadcast. Radio is always real-time... satellite is ALWAYS delayed by > 5 seconds. So all you fools that celebrated New Year's by watching TV... YOU WERE ALL 7 SECONDS LATE... And you celebration is invalid.