We are now decades into the digital revolution.

So why haven't high-tech audio streams caught up to old-fashioned radio waves?

Hi, it's Todd Bishop, and that was my question on last week's Skiquire podcast.

After conducting an experiment that was inspired by the tradition of tuning

into the play-by-play announcers while watching a baseball game in the stands. During a Seattle

Mariners game at T-Mobile Park, I found that the audio streams from various smartphone apps were

at least 30 seconds behind the action on the field and sometimes even further behind.

That meant there were multiple pitches between what I was seeing with my eyes and hearing in my ears.

It compared to a lag of just a few seconds when listening on a $22 battery-powered AM transistor radio.

I offered my theories about the reasons for this last week, and I heard from a

bunch of you who listened to the podcast or read the article. I also reached out and received a

response from Major League Baseball, which I'll share later. But first, I got a great technical

explanation from streaming media veteran Rob Green, who was group manager of Microsoft's digital media division

from 1998 to 2006. Rob went on to lead a variety of tech and digital media startups, including

a past role as CEO of Seattle-based Abacast, which streamed broadcast radio stations online.

Green is a longtime geekwire reader who emailed me after

last week's post, and I jumped on the line with him for the full explanation. So based on the

email you sent me, Rob, you would have told me even before I got to the ballpark last week that my

experiment was going to fail, or at least you could have told me the outcome that terrestrial

radio would have been faster to my ears than the internet stream.

Correct.

Why?

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