[time-nuts] How do US TV stations disseminate time to DTV converter

[Mark Sims]

Poorly... very, very poorly.   FCC regs state the broadcast PSIP time has to be with a  second of GPS time.  Unfortunately many stations send out VERY scuzzy time data... and complaining to the FCC is useless (I've tried).    They are only worried about Janet Jackson's nipples.   All it takes is one station to be off and your converter/DVR can be practically useless.   Apparently many of the boxes use the same source code that has an uncanny knack for choosing the worst possible source for their time.

The DTVPal  over-the-air DVR was very prone to losing time sync until their  latest firmware (V208) where they now do a weighted median of all the received stations clocks.   They have a debug screen where you can see what the various stations are sending out.. scary.   Why the heck  the blithering idiots that market these things don't offer the option of a manual,  line synced clock is beyond me.  My AC  clocks are never off by more than  a second.  The DTV converters can be off by hours.


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