I've recently invested in a TV and soundbar and super happy with them. It's a Philips 50" Ultra HD 4k TV with active 3D and a Samsung soundbar with subwoofer. Therefore, both known, reputable brands etc.

However, I'm getting sync issues and no matter what I seem to do I can't get video and audio in sync. Anybody got any suggestions or tried and tested methods to achieve this at all?

 

You must have cable. The sync problem probably comes from your cable provider box. Try resetting it, but I see this all the time in places where they run more than one screen, but not so much with just one.

 

I have a pretty straightforward setup. I'm in UK and using a bog standard Free-to-Air decoder box to receive channels from a communal Sky dish in my apartment block.

The Sky dish cable goes into my decoder box, which is connected via HDMI to my TV. I also have an Amazon Fire TV Stick, PS4 and Xbox One all connected via HDMI to the 4 HDMI ports on the TV. I am then using a digital optical toslink cable from the TV into my Samsung subwoofer. I initially tried using HDMI ARC, but that seemed worse in terms of out of syn than toslink.

The delay seems to be there when watching TV on HDMI 1, Fire TV Stick on HDMI 2 or playing games on the two other HDMI sockets. Just can't work out where the delay is coming from or how to resolve it! Tried adjust the audio sync delay on my Samsung sound system but that seems to make the delay step further away rather than tightening it up and I have no option to 'go the other way', if that makes sense?

 

Unplugging the HDMI cable while ON for a few seconds can reset this and sync back up.
If you're using Comcast, they have a MoCA filter available that can help with external frequency 'noise'. Also make sure your cable box and TV have the latest firmware. If you are using Comcast the best thing would be to file a trouble ticket because I've seen this happen a lot. They might suggest using component cables or using optical for your audio but with poor quality cables you could inadvertently create a bottleneck.
You should also be able to run a diagnostic on your box to view any errors in streams.

Also keep in mind that all HDMI cables will support 1080 up-scaled to 4K but there are some cheap HDMI cables that won't be able to hold up the data transfer when you watch actual 4K video at 2160.

Just saw your post. You're in luck as you can forget the Comcast nonsense.

Check the TV Setup menu, probably in the Advanced Sound settings for Audio Out Delay. See if you get an Offset option to configure if Audio Out Delay is turned on.
This should be the same place where you enabled ARC.

 

Last edited: Jan 15, 2017

You might also want to check if the TV is in "game" mode.
In that mode it will turn off any post processing of the picture to get it onscreen with as little delay as possible so you don't feel any input lag while playing games.

The idea of the audio out delay, is that the TV takes x amount of time to post-process the video and display it, and the delay only going one way is because it will only ever need a later audio signal.

 

@Pinkman
You took the words out of my mouth. Check the tv settings for an audio latency buffer

 

also look at the soundbar. Samsung usually has sync capabilities built in in it

 

Yeah but the sound bar can only delay the audio. The TV usually can go +/-

 

Last edited: Jan 15, 2017