Receiver Latency ?

[percy]

this is a little bit about the inner workings of a spdif receiver, but let me first make sure I have my facts correct, based on which I am asking this question.

In a typical 16bit 44.1Khz digital stream transmitted over a spdif connection each sample is enveloped in a 32 bit subframe in BMC(biphase) mode. The output of the receiver going to the DAC is just regular serial data(not bmc). Additionally, the clock on the receiver input is twice (because of bmc), than that at the output. So essentially it takes the same time for the receiver to pull in 32 bits as it takes to output 16 bits. Not more, not less. It doesn't have any more time to spare.

Since the receiver does some "processing" on the incoming stream i.e. extracts the sample from it, coverts it back to non-bmc stream, synchronizes the clock and what not, and all this while still reading and sending out the bit stream. So my question is -
Doesn't all this processing take time ? How does the receiver still manage to make it in time ? Or does it ?