FIOS...how can this happen??

[MaryAnnDVC]

We have FIOS. I have the TV in the kitchen on, as well as the TV in the living room. (I'm busy going back and forth (not rewound), and trying to catch a show.) The TV show is showing at the same time...a very slight delay between rooms...but when the commercials were on, they were completely different commercials. ??? I've noticed this on a couple of other occasions. I double checked that the TVs are indeed on the same channel, and that the shows came back on at the same place in the show.

How can that be??

 

[wvjules]

That is strange.

Are they room specific commercials? Like appliances, food, cooking in the kitchen and regular commrcials in the living room? Maybe you have smart TVs?

 

[MaryAnnDVC]

I just turned a 3rd TV on...bedroom. My DH should be home soon, and he's going to wonder what the heck I'm doing.

Didn't notice what the commercials were except that they were different. But it did occur to me since then that the TV in the living room also has TIVO. If that's the issue (but why would that matter what a specific channel shows??) then the TVs in the bedroom and the kitchen should be the same, if the LR is different. I keep waiting for commercials, and then run from room to room to see what's on. But so far, they've been the same since the other incident when I first posted. Like I said, I've only noticed it a few times in the past...it's not all the time.

If nothing else, I'm getting exercise.

 

[DisneyBelle99]

We have FIOS, and it is nutty when the TV in the bedroom is sometimes 2 seconds ahead, sometimes behind, but I have never seen two different commercials. Interested to see what Customer Service has to say if you call them.

 

[MaryAnnDVC]

I googled it and this thread came up.

 

[erincon23]

Are you sure you actually have the same TV service being used on both TVs? (I've never heard of FIOS) Could you be picking up service for one tv with the FIOS and on the other one, something else? We have a very slight delay between two TVs in our house, just enough to be annoying, and for a short time when we were switching services, we were getting our (new) satellite service on one TV and on the other one we were just picking up the signal like people used to do before they had satellite and cable (you know, in teh dark ages). Some of the commercials then were different.

 

[MickeySP]

Is one box a DVR and one just regular HD?

 

[msjprincess]

I don't know, I've had FIOS for several years and I've never had that happen. That's weird

 

[lynxstch]

2 tvs hooked up, 2 dvr's..and I have had that happen also...programs aren't on the same spot at same time on both tvs..and had 1 commercial on 1 set..and a totally different one on the other..asked cable co...they told me it was something in the lines that caused it but they didn't know what..or how to fix it..lol!

 

[MaryAnnDVC]

We actually have FIOS and TIVO on one TV...the one in the LR. FIOS on all the other TVs in the house. The channels on the TV in the LR can be changed with either the FIOS remote or the TIVO remote. It's sort of (very) confusing, but the TV in the LR was on the same channel through FIOS as the other TVs, but with different commercials. If I look at the channel that is on right now through TIVO, it's not the same as the one that's actually showing on the TV.

Does this make ANY sense? It drove me nuts when we first got it hooked up like this, and still does sometimes. One wacky thing is that I try to record something with TIVO, it will record whatever is on the screen, so if it's on a FIOS channel, it records that show instead.

 

[bicker]

Many subscription television systems employ digital simulcast to provide different feeds for standard definition (digital) channels and high definition channels. Those two feeds, of the same network, could indeed be out of synch with each other (and generally are, for various reasons), and indeed that split makes it possible to target different commercials to these two segments of the market. (Indeed, FiOS actually provides some networks on multiple channels, once as part of their main offering, and again as part of offerings aimed at specific affinity groups, such as Latinos. They could - really should - utilize that segmentation for targeting specific inserted commercials.)

I know that they were working on the technology to dynamically feed inserted commercials on cable networks (this cannot happen on over-the-air broadcast channels), but I wasn't aware that they had started deploying that technology.

 

[phamton]

We have Brighthouse network in Orlando which is owned by Time-Warner. I first noticed the different commercials when we were watching the finale of "Lost." In the living room, my son was watching it on the (local ABC) HD channel and I was watching it in the bedroom on the (local) regular ABC channel. Some of the commercials were the same especially the Orlando commercials but the national commercials were different.

 

[mjkacmom]

We have fios (a PP never heard of it, but it's one of the top 2 here), and the main box is a bit faster than the rest of them.

 

[Cheshire Figment]

I have sometimes eaten dinner in the bar area in a Chilis. I have seen two TVs set on the same channel about three seconds out of sync.

 

[bicker]

I have sometimes eaten dinner in the bar area in a Chilis. I have seen two TVs set on the same channel about three seconds out of sync.

Though I bet not different commercials.

You point out another mechanism for the synchronization issue: Different tuners and video processors perform differently. A lot of people think that because it's all electromagnetic energy and light that transporting a television signal from broadcast tower to the screen is instantaneous. That's not the case. The signals need to traverse several electronic components and that may take a different amount of time on different devices. Indeed, some high-end audio systems provide a means of delaying the playback of audio, so it can be manually synched up with the video being presented on the display component.