streaming question

[Kali]

I am playing around with hooking a tablet to my old stereo so I can stream a radio station that I can no longer pull in over the air.

I just noticed something strange - both are streaming from the house connection to wifi - same station same website...the tablet is running almost a full minute behind the desktop. WTF?

I remember when I could still pull the station in over the air and the timing was a little different than the stream on my computer, and I can kind of understand that, but two devices sitting side by side and streaming from the same connection? why is the tablet so far behind?

[earthshine]

1. They're streaming from the same physical connection in your home, but ...

they are two separate data streams going through the net.

Each has it's own path, and one is longer than the other.

If you restart one of the streams, I'll bet you see a different lag time.

[Kali]

3. why would one be longer than the other?

I feel a little like that politician who thought the internet was a series of tubes.

[earthshine]

8. Whenever a connection is established across the net, it goes through numerous servers and relays.

The exact path is determined at the time of connection based on up-to-the-millisecond traffic loads, and as such, is never the same twice.

Sen. Stevens was a total jerk, but "tubes" is not a terribly inaccurate metaphor. Concepts such as bandwidth, throughput, and load balancing apply.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

2. Tablets have solid state memory

Your pc probably has a regular hard drive. Your tablet's OS is likely optimized for that and probably buffers less data before it starts playing. That along with what earthshine said about start times may explain most of the difference.

[Kali]

5. the tablet was behind the pc

not that I have much of clue about solid states or hard drive physiology - start drifting into electricity and I get a big old mental block. seemed strange to me to be that much different.

[Eko]

7. Ram

has more to do with that then the drive, although a ssd can help. Ill take more/faster ram and a regular drive than less ram and a ssd anytime. Video loads into ram, not the hard drive for streaming purposes.

[Eko]

4. Desktops

can be much stronger than tablets, more memory, faster wifi, and better processor just because they have more space to utilize. If you have a pretty good desktop then that would be the reason.

[Kali]

6. that makes a little more sense to my brain