What is the time lapse between any event and live tv broadcast eg Cricket?

Answer 1

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a live television broadcast now we have moved to digital broadcasting. In the days of analog television, a signal was captured, processed and broadcast without delays. The final delay was the time taken for signals to be sent over wires or radio links which happens at about the speed of light.

In digital broadcasting, a complete frame or field is captured by a camera before being sent to a vision mixer (or switcher). The switcher typically delays the image by one or two frames while it is processed. Each device that handles the signal will normally store a frame, process it and send it on so adding another frame of delay.

By the time the signal is ready for broadcast, it is compressed. The compression process can add several frames, perhaps up to 15 or 20 to the total delay. A television receiver will take a similar number of frames of delay to un-compress a signal and display it. Where analog and digital broadcasts are still used side by side, watching both side by side will show the compression and de-compression delay quite clearly with the digital television lagging behind the analog by a second or more.

For remote events, links from one country to another add anything up to a second or two of delay in the signal as well.

From the time the event happens to the time it is seen on a television screen at home, the total delay can be several seconds. Therefore, what you see as a live event can be 5 seconds out of date.