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Satellite Radio - XM vs. Sirius?
"So far I have gathered that XM seems to have better audio quality, and a larger selection of music channels. Sirius has less music channels, but more "commercial free" music channels and more talk channels. Also, it scares me that Clear Channel has a stake in XM -- does this mean XM will eventually turn to utter crap like every Clear Channel station seems to have? Does Clear Channel have enough ownership to have a say in programming?
I'm looking for more strengths and weaknesses from people who have used one (or better yet, both!) of the services. I'm leaning towards XM right now, with the Clear Channel issue being my main fright. Sirius streams their stations online, giving me a good sample. So far I have been fairly impressed. But, I like the fact that XM carries Art Bell, more than one 80's station, and VH1 content. It's a toss up, so I'm looking forward to some info from the Slashdot community."
there are several in-dash MP3 players that also support sirius and xm.
check out these:
Alpine 7897 (XM ready)
Kenwood Excelon KDC-X659 (sirius ready)
There's actually a bunch. Check Crutchfield....
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
We have ALL seen how quickly networks that aren't at the top can fall over. The network is only as strong as its customer base.
XM has a strong ad campaign, has been out longer, is cheaper (10 a month vs 12.99? I think..), more people have heard of XM, and if I am going to as a production company go with one of the Satilite Radio networks, I am going to go with XM, because more people are going to use it.
In addition, I believe that XM has deals with some major car companies, to install XM radios on many of their cars, and some are prepaying to subscription fee (which in the scope of a car purchase isn't that much really). XM has better numbers (their stock that is). They only needed 60,000 users to break even i think, but they will have over a half million i think by the end of the year.
I might be wrong on a few of those facts, but I think I am right on most of them. Overall XM seems to be better (and my XM stock has performed alot better, I wouldn't touch Sirus at all, except to short it!)
Overall, check their stock news, etc.... its got some great info. You don't want a receiver that in one a year will be nothing more than a Busted Tech company reminder (think of BS Zelda on Nintendo, 300 dollars, and it didn't last more than 3 weeks...)
Tibbon
tibbon.com
There are also XM only tuners, which play through your existing stereo via RF modulation, like a lot of CD Changers use.
I'm looking at the add-ons now, because I don't want to have a crappy, ill-fitting tuner in my dash. (I drive a Dodge Durango, and the Stereo is over sized... I hate the look of spacers, etc.)
Sony makes an Add-on tuner that is dockable, and the you can get an additional dock for use in the home. That way, you can take the XM into the house at night, if you wanted to. You do need an additional antenna though.
Also, keep in mind that the prices you see never seem to include the antennas. Apparently, $199 for the tuner is for the non-working solution. It takes some more money to get a functioning solution.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
bad prices, though. Anything you find at Crutchfield you can usually find somewhere else for at least 10% less.
OTOH, car audio is a major racket and there are lots of shady people in it. Crutchfield doesn't even try to compete on price, they compete on service. You can get some things cheaper elsewhere, but you might be paying someone who definitely doesn't deserve the money.
I've been watching the Satellite Radio market for the past 5 years business-wise, and I've chosen Sirius Radio.
)
Top 5 Reasons:
1) No commercials.
2) 3 Satellites
3) Just released the PAC v4 Audio Codec; derived from a series of unique technologies that include the latest generation of psychoacoustic modeling, based on a deeper understanding of hearing physiology. This new coded beats XM's previous audio comparison hands-down. (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020610/nym024_1.html
4) NPR.
5) Sirius has the business advantage of being the second on the market. They can learn from XM's mistakes without making a fool out of themselves.
5a) The cool little dog logo.
and I haven't bought a new CD or touched MP3s in three months.
It's that good. Where to start....
1. Content: Excellent. The 6 or 7 rock channels are superb and all are commercial free. I start my day out with Fred, Channel 44, and listen to a little alternative music. Move over to Unsigned, channel 51 and listen to the new bands that are up and coming. Some really good stuff there. Decide I want to make the commute a little better, so I flip over to CHannel 160, Comedy XL and enjoy some of the stand up bits they play constantly from people like Margaret Cho, Chris Rock, Denis Leary, and a whole bunch of other talented, dirty comedians. Next switch is to BBC World Service, then onto Discovery Radio News where I listen to a bit about the Endeavour Mission to the Space shuttle.
Memorial Day Weekend: XM Special channel 30 plays surf music all weekend long to kick off the start of the summer. Excellent!
I can literally listen to more music than I could possibly have in my car in the form of $15 CDs with 12 songs on them. Bluegrass, country, the best of the 70s, Classic rock,Opera, Broadway shows, they even had a John Williams special on the Show-Tunes channel and I was driving down the road listening to the Vader Theme from Star Wars. They also had Blues Traveller perform live, interviewed Mic Jagger once, and many others.
Talk- Great selection. Phil Hendrie, the funniest man in radio is on in the afternoon on 166, The Buzz.
2. Audio Quality and clarity- Excellent for the most part. I'd say the sound quality is just below that of a CD, but I have the Sony plug and play unit that interfaces into my cassette player in my car. I didn't want to get a new head unit. It sounds excellent at home plugged into my receiver. The sony unit also has a USB connection on the back for future connectivity with a PC, I assume.
I live in Los Angeles, and in some parts of the City, the signal will go uninterrupted even under bridges. I was under the impression they didn't have the audio repeaters up yet (due to fights with the Cell phone companies and the NAB), but in some areas of LA you can be in a deep dark tunnel and still hear your radio. In the suburbs, however, a bridge will temporarily knock out your reception.
Sirius isn't even nation-wide yet. They don't anticipate a full launch until August. As far as Clear Channel investing in XM, it's not a worry. XM is selling a service. XM is the new HBO of Radio and they are not going to screw it up. It's their business model to say they are different from FM, Clear Channel is just providing content, especially the talk shows. And BTW, Sirius is also being invested in by Infinity/CBS, another major radio player.
As far as advertising, on the talk channels you may have up to 20 minutes per hour, but on XM content music channels, you won't find more than 6 minutes per hour, and there are 30 commercial free channels.
GO with XM. You will not regret it, I promise you. The variety of the content is just remarkable, you will want to drive around more or bring the unit into your house just to explore. This is the future fellas, I was skeptical at first, but now I don't want to be without it.
The two approaches have different plusses and minuses. With the geo-stationary birds, if you get a good signal in your driveway right now, you will most likely always get the same good signal there, while with the lower orbit birds the signal strength may cycle with position of the satellite. On the other hand, the lower orbit sats are much closer, and so might be able to get a stronger signal to you.
Neither approach has redundancy, as they need all their satellites for complete coverage. If one went down XM would have permanent dead zones, Sirius would have wandering dead zones. Take your pick.
XM's satellite info page
Sirius' fairly lame "how it works" (PDF)
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
XM's two satelites are in geostationary orbit, one towards the East coast, one towards the West. You have line of site to both of the all the time (well, probably). The only issue here is that since they're geostationary over the equator, that angle gets a little iffy in places like Seattle, where the satelites are always low on the horizon, and thus more easily blocked by buildings, CowboyNeal, etc. This, however, makes it easy to set up ground based repeaters because you can point the ground repeaters at a satelite and leave them alone.
Sirius' three satelites are in elliptical orbits, and two of the three are over the continental US at all times. The orbits make the angles better (less likely to be blocked by building because the satelite is more likely to be overhead, even in Seattle), but makes doing ground based repeaters hella hard. Sirius rents bandwidth on K-band IIRC to beam signal to the ground based repeaters, which is more expensive and more complicated, but works nonetheless.
That third satelite doesn't do much for reliability. If you lose it, you're going to have areas of the country not getting signal for a good portion of the day, which isn't much better than having portions of the country not getting signal most of the day in the case of XM.
And as far as being money hungry, IIRC these are both publicly traded companies with corporate partners. They both want to make money, and neither of them has your best interests at heart no matter how good their marketspeak is. There is no good guy here. You can morally oppose Clear Channel, and XM by extension. Go ahead. Just remember that its your opinion, and you'll be fine.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
Unless you want to lose the use of the integration features on most new cars (My Aztek has the radio that integrates with the HUD, the speedometer to adjust volume the faster you go, alarm integration, user integration (radio presets and all other settings including EQ along with seat position and mirror position change depending what key is used to start the vehilce/keyfob used to open the doors) or my steering wheel controls.
There is nothing on the market that has XM capability (or any aftermarket for that matter) that can integrate with today's advanced vehicular computer systems. getting XM and losing all that is not a worthwile trade off. and the XM tuner is a pure joke.. the reason for XM radio is for CD quality, not to listen to really crappily modulated FM (as the modulators are of the crappiest quality.)
Pay really close attention, if you buy a cheapie car that has no systems integration then you are set, but most any modern car with luxury options cannot have the radio replaced without losing a ton of features.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm seeing a lot of people concerned with the head units in regards to XM radio, and this is somewhat baffling. I have XM radio installed, and some of the questions here seem irrelevant.
The XM radio has three separate components. You have the antenna, which attaches to the top of the vehicle, then you have the decoder which decodes the satellite signal. Finally, you need some sort of receiver, like an XM compatible head unit. XM radio can also be installed by putting an FM modulator in, requiring no replacement of the head unit. You also have the option of purchasing an XM compatible head unit, however. This is nice because everything is all in one unit, but if this isn't possible, you get a small square control device for it.
It's also important to remember that if you have a Pioneer head unit that's XM compatible, you *have* to have a Pioneer decoder. A friend of mine has a Sony XM compatible head unit, and he's still waiting for Sony's decoder to come out. As far as I know, Pioneer is the only one that has a complete decoder/modulator combination in place.
As far as Sirius goes, I've never heard of it, and I've never seen any head units supporting it. Sounds like a bad idea, to me. Overall, I spent about 300 for the install/setup, and it's 10 bucks a month.
I went with XM Radio, and a Sony XM01 receiver. Most audio comparisons between the two favor XM's sound quality over Sirius. I haven't listened to Sirius, so I can't comment on the channel lineup, but they seemed pretty similar in terms of no-commercial channels and breadth.
Choose your receiver carefully. Don't let them sell you an "FM Modulator" -- hardwire your receiver to get all that sound quality you pay for. After all, an FM Modulator can only sound as good as FM.
The Sony receiver is nice, and I like that it is removable. However, it has some drawbacks. The blue-backlit screen is terribly blurry and hard to read, especially at a quick you-should-be-driving glance. It only has five presets, which is fewer than I would like on a lineup of 100 channels.
The XM programming so far has been terrific. No complaints there. Ethel rocks.
For all those hosers and thread-crappers saying "Get an MP3 player", "Get a CD Changer", you miss the point! I'm tired of listening to the same CDs I've heard before. Where do you go to hear something new? Your own CD collection? Your own MP3s? I go to the radio, and XM Radio beats FM.
Don't forget that XM has defective Boeing satellites, ones that have rapid degeneration of the solar array.
3 71 1
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2101_89
I've read that in as little as 2-3 years they will have to start shutting down channels. And I can't see them being able to replace the satellites so soon.
Cash wise, Sirius has more money available, while XM has been close to going broke for the past year.
XM's ties to Clear Channel also bother me. CC has ruined local radio in many a market, mine included.
For $2 more a month, Sirius has NO commercials at all on ANY of the music channels. THAT, to me, is worth it, and the ONLY reason why I'd go with one of these.
Isn't the whole point of getting one of these things to get greater diversity of programming, and get away from having penis enhancment and hair restoration snake oil, plus annoying car dealer ads blasted at you for 6-10 minutes at a time between song sets?
I don't like the idea of paying for music radio, that I can get for "free", when it's also going to have ads. And given XM's financial condition (and ties to Clear Channel) there is no guarantee that the length of the stopsets won't increase to resemble typical commercial FM radio.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I have Sirius through my Kenwood head unit. The sound quality on the talk and news channels was somewhat strange to begin with, but either Sirius has upped the data rate on some of their stations, or I'm just getting used to it, because I can't tell the difference in sonic quality between Sirius and a good FM station any more. The only channels that seemed to have weird artifacts were the talk channels, anyways. I'd assume they had those set to low data rates to begin with, because they thought they could get away with it, but people complained so they upped the bandwidth. I have also had excellent reception in my area (Iowa) with interstate overpasses hardly ever interrupting the signal. Since the satellites actually move, and there is more than one over head most of the time, I usually get signals from a good angle even if something is obscuring the view directly over the car. I mostly use Sirius for NPR, PRI and BBC reception, because most american radio stations play nothing but mindless pap (Clear Channel being the worst offender, IMHO)
NPR recently had a segment on satellite radio which compares XM and Sirius in some detail. If you're in the market, check it out.