Had enough of lip sync problems...

Rojin · 2 Mar 2006 at 14:24

Lip sync problems when watching DVD's are driving me nuts and I have had enough of putting up with them. Currently I have a Marantz SR4200, Harmon Kardon 506 LE, Panny PWD6 with an ole Mission Cinema six pack speaker setup. Sound and vision wise I am happy with the setup, I just wish that they were both in sync!

As I see it I have two solutions, (a) I can get a lip sync correction box or (b) an amp with audio delay. (a) Would be the cheapest option but (b) opens up another can of worms... I also have an Xbox 360, HTPC and a digital cable box to connect to the screen, a new amp with component inputs would help with this. With this in mind I have been looking at the Yamaha DSP-AX757SE as it seems well recommended. I don't really have room for extra speakers though so I wonder if this amp would be overkill (I could possibly add a centre rear speaker)...

I haven't been keeping up to date with developments of late so I'm trying to catch up now. Is the 757 worth looking at or is there something better out there? (around the £300-400 mark...).

Rojin · 2 Mar 2006 at 15:35

Audio is sometimes slightly before the video, doesn't happen on all DVD's but enough to annoy me...

The Denon does look pretty good, seen it for £270 as well... hmmm... The Yamaha upscales as well, I'm not sure the Denon does?

Rojin · 2 Mar 2006 at 18:57

Never found dvd playback from a HTPC to be any better than my existing progressive player to be honest. Also I don't have a decent soundcard in there at the moment with optical out. It's something I have been playing around with, I was going to use the xbox 360 as a front end but it's too noisy!

edit: Going to look more into the full HTPC side of things... Doh! just realised that is does have spdif output... will have a play around with it.

Also, how can you resolve the lip sync issues if using a htpc?

Rojin · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:18

I can't even get the bleeding thing to play DVD's now, powerdvd runs ok but with massive lag on the sound via spdif, I can't get media centre to play the dvd at all

Rojin · 2 Mar 2006 at 23:54

I did come across that when googlin' the evening away... I have got everything working fine through MCE now (problem with codecs), going to see how it goes. Think I need a quieter dvd drive though, this slot loader that I've had for yonks isn't the quietest...

No lip sync problems so far though...

Rojin · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:33

I'm in a codec nightmare! Haven't hit the sweetspot where I get dvd playback and hdtv within MCE... ah the joy of Pc's...

Rojin · 5 Mar 2006 at 12:57

Goatboy said:
Ditch all that rubbish and download the trial version of Theatertek and get ffdshow as well, use ffdshow to change the resolution to match your display and let TT do it's stuff. In TT all you need to do is press [ or ] to adjust the lip sync, couldn't be easier.

Cheers for pointing me in the direction of this, also found software for running the dvd quieter and I'm quite impressed with the results. I can't get the resize to work very well in ffdshow though, I get a lot of stutter which I haven't been able to get rid of as yet. It's running on a A64 3200+ with a gig of ram, I would've thought that would be enough? I can't get the codec balance right for everything to play within MCE as yet either, so I'm running video outside of it which isn't the end of the world.