how can you avoid having your goals “spoiled” by your neighbors?

To avoid experiencing Euro matches, or any sporting competition, with a slight delay compared to your neighbors, franceinfo explains how the matches are broadcast and how not to see a goal after everyone else.

For a matter of seconds… Not everyone is in the same boat when watching a football match. Because, it is well known, in the event of goals for the Blues, the nightmare of certain fans could well show the end of its crampons : be late in the live match compared to your neighbors.

And the most experienced know that, depending on the broadcasting method, a delay of several seconds can be observed between television channels within the same residence. And it’s not just a question of television channel. These precious seconds of joy (we hope) are caused by a succession of technical signals.

To better understand what is happening, we need to take a step back. If this World Cup is broadcast across the world in real time, it is thanks to the video and sound signals sent in approximately a few tenths of a second by satellites which are in geostationary orbit some 36,000 km above our stadiums. Round trip time of the radio wave : around 260 milliseconds.

Faster than Kylian Mbappé, but a little less than the blink of an eye, which lasts on average between 100 and 150 milliseconds. The signal then arrives at the broadcaster who ingests it, compresses it and encodes it, before sending it, this time, to each reception system. And already, this has, in fact, already caused a slight lag of a few tenths of a second more with what is really happening at the stadium.

And this is where it gets tricky: it all depends on the way of receiving this signal, namely via digital terrestrial television (DTT) or via the Internet, the two main modes of reception of television in France. So, here, analog access remains by far the most reliable: the TV connected directly to the rake antenna or to the satellite will receive the image – in reality – just four to five seconds after the goal was scored on the field. It’s very slightly longer, in fact, for matches broadcast in very high definition, such as 4K – the file is heavier.

As for television via Internet boxes, it is much slower. And it all also depends on the equipment and the quality of the line: fiber will be faster than ADSL and even faster than WiFi or 5G. Finally, the worst tip is to follow the match on your smartphone connected to 3 or 4G. Mixing poor connection, phone buffer and application buffer can cause (big) lags. On arrival, some can see the goal up to thirty seconds before others.

But, finally, there remains an unstoppable tip to experience the match almost instantly : the radio ! FM – and Franceinfo, obviously – theoretically broadcast sound at “its cruising speed” of 300 000 kilometers per second. Enough to cause a gap of barely a second with the reality on the ground.