Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Please God anything but Joe Buck

If you're like us, and I suspect you are, you probably can't stand the fact that the World Series, year after year, is broadcast on FOX, meaning you have to listen to the drivel from Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for 4-7 games. On the other hand, you probably really appreciate the professional, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable Jon Miller, calling the game for ESPN radio. Yes, Joe Morgan is the color guy, and we all know he can say some stupid shit, but there's one thing we can agree on: Miller and Morgan are FAR better than Buck and McCarver.

So like us, you've probably tried to turn off the sound on your TV and listen to the game on the radio. The problem? The TV feed is almost always 3-4 seconds or more behind the radio feed. So they're not in sync and you hear the play before you see it and it sucks. So we've gone ahead and done some googling to see what we can find in the way of a solution. We found several options for products you can use to delay the audio feed so it matches with the TV.

First up: RTS-200C RADIOTVSYNCTM STEREO AUDIO DELAY WITH REMOTE. This is a serious piece of audio equipment that goes for $189.95. Then you probably have to add on shipping costs, and of course it won't get to you in time for the game tonight, so screw it. But for next year, maybe.

Second: SPORTSYNC, the AM/FM radio with Sports Audio Delay. This appears to basically be a walkman with a delay feature. It can plug into the stereo and is a much more affordable $39.95. It appears this is also not available in stores, so you'll have to wait.

Third: Radio SHARK 2: This appears to be like a TiVo for your radio. $49.99 and you have to order it. Seems like not a great option.

Next: Radiodelay from Daan Systems. This looks like a decent piece of free software that allows you to plug a radio into the microphone port of your computer, and then delay the audio to match it with the TV. Sadly it only works with PCs and I'm running Mac, but if anyone out there tries it let us know how it works. This could be the answer.

Finally: Use the TiVo. This link explains how to set you TiVo or other DVR to pause the game, then sync it to the MLB Gameday Audio broadcast of the game. Of course, you have to subscribe to MLB Gameday Audio to do this. Sounds a little like a pain in the ass. But it's also only $4.95 to get all the World Series games. I don't have a DVR at home, so this won't work for me...

So what am I to do? I'm not gonna spend money and wait for the SportSync. I don't have TiVo, and I'm not running a PC. Time to get creative. As a speech therapist I have some odd stuff including this Delayed Auditory Feedback device, check it out. Now, I'll have to wait till I get home tonight to find out, but I think I have the right cords and cables and I'm pretty sure this will do the trick. I plug the radio into the microphone port on the DAF, run a cable from the headphone jack of the DAF to my stereo, adjust the delay, and voila, I'm good to go!

One final note - from what I've read it appears some people have the opposite problem - the radio being behind the TV. Well if you have TiVo that's fixed easily enough (pause the TV for a second, unpause when they're synced), and if not, shit you're on your own.

7 comments:

Paint Drinking Pete said...

If you have satellite radio, the sports broadcasts are almost always behind the television broadcasts, so it's easy to pause your DVR and wait for the TV to catch up to the radio.

I'm not sure if the World Series games are available via satellite radio, but I've used this trick for watching college football games with local broadcasters.

Anonymous said...

well my enthusiasm might be unfounded, - I realized my DAF device might not have a long enough delay... even turned all the way up, it's only about 1 second.

Anonymous said...

Jamie -

You are my technological master.

Anonymous said...

Well I was hoping for actual reviews here... anyway I am going for the Motron RadioTVSync. I just can't watch the B-Team broadcasters anymore. And Joe Buck is pretty brutal at times.

Anonymous said...

It only reserve

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custom writing services said...

Nice list of radios. But I'm sure there is no reason to compare radio and TV nowadays, cause it's obvious that the radios is becoming less and less popular nowadays.