Syncing TV box audio in the house

It's streaming via the internet. All devices have some delay variation due to the connection and the bandwidth.

I can't think of any video streaming service that attempts to do what you ask. 

I know that audio streaming services (e.g. Amazon Music) have worked very, very hard to do the same thing with audio, and it's a big hurdle.  It usually requires that you have specific hardware in specific configurations.

I know not of any video service that's even working on it.

It's because all of them are at a different point in the stream.

Oooh... hidden post by DIRECTVhelp.  That's great.  I wonder why they're asking for this guy's account information.  What could possibly be account-specific about this. 

 Which responder are you talking about? It does sound weird to ask for their info 😳

They have little knowledge about what they are doing!

Sorry, @Minz , maybe I misread the situation.  My notification button said that DIRECTVhelp had made a comment on this thread.  I looked and I could not see one, I assumed it was a Private comment (which they usually use to ask the original poster for account information).  Maybe they posted and decided they made a mistake and deleted it.

heck even my directv does that im downstairs watching the same channel as my wife upstairs and theres a 3 second delay on the upstairs tv and they are both hardwired 

Back in the days of simple Analog OTA signal or even Analog CATV distribution, yeah, all your TVs are getting the same signal at the same time, no buffering at all.  And yes, they were all naturally synced.  That was probably true in the very early days of Satellite, back before MPEG2, encryption, etc.

Now, everything has to buffer a stream.  U-verse TV set tops have the best odds, because they are reading one multicast stream; but even they started with a unicast stream and buffer the multicast so that each box may be displaying a different frame at the same time.

For two devices with independent unicast streams?  Fahgetabahtit!

@JefferMC Not a problem. But seriously, in the bizarre world we’re living in, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they were!!

Getting back to the discussion…so then it’s a totally different type of technology than what I had with my previous Comcast Xfinity service? Because that provider’s boxes were totally in sync.

Xfinity is still a CATV broadcast service.  All of the channels are transmitted throughout the cable to your entire home.  Given that electrons on copper wire travel at a large fraction of the speed of light in vacuum, the distance is negligible.  Assuming that all your converter boxes are equal, and they all get the signal effectively simultaneously, they all process the signal at the same rate, it will all appear on the TV screens/speakers at the same time.

However, when using any streaming service that utilizes unicast streams (DIRECTV stream, Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, etc.) each app/device requests its own independent stream of content from the server. Each one is going to be on its own point in that stream at a different time, and that point may move relative to the others based on pausing due empty buffers, etc.

Now, I have to take back something I said earlier.  There have been attempts at synchronized watching.  Teleparty for instance, where I can watch a move "with" one or more friends not located with me.  Teleparty does attempt at some level to synchronize the streams for the multiple viewers; when one pauses to go to the bathroom, everyone's app pauses.  However, I don't think it's synchronized as accurately as you need for your sound to be right.  The Plex ecosystem has a similar feature built in.