Man-cave holiday project #8: Listen to the radio coverage while watching footy or cricket

• Project: Listen to the radio coverage while watching footy or cricket
• Why you'd attempt it: radio commentary is often more insightful
• Difficulty factor: Simple
• Links: tunein.com

The delay on digital broadcasts is a pain if you want to mute the television to listen to the radio, but there are a few workarounds.

If you’d rather listen to the ABC’s Jim Maxwell in your man-cave this summer, instead of Nine’s Tony Greig, you need to find a way to get the radio and television in sync. The radio broadcast is a few seconds ahead of the television, which spoils the action because you hear about a wicket before you see it.

One workaround is to invest in a new digital radio with a pause button, such as the Pure digital radios with the built-in Revu function. It takes a little trial and error, but it's not that hard to get the two in sync.

Obviously not everyone wants to spend money on a new radio just for listening to sport. It also won’t work if you’ve got poor or non-existent digital radio coverage. The alternative is to listen to the radio online, which is around 30 seconds behind the live broadcast. You could run it via your computer, smartphone or tablet, going straight to the broadcaster's website or using an app such as Tunein. Some ISPs such as Internode also offer unmetered access to many online radio stations. Once you're listening to the radio online, you can pause the television (if you have a set top box with this function) until the two are in sync.

Listening to the cricket online via ABC Grandstand is simple, but listening to the football online is more complicated. For example, Telstra owns the online broadcast rights for the AFL which means that radio stations can’t simulcast their coverage online and are forced to play music instead. Some have even resorted to workarounds for listening to Telstra’s streaming AFL coverage via any ISP.