Satellite Radio - XM vs. Sirius?

wizman asks: "I am getting a new car tonight and will be upgrading the audio system. Now that satellite radio is available in most markets and becoming more affordable, I am definitely planning to take the plunge. Unfortunately, the 2 providers -- XM and Sirius -- both seem to have just as many strengths as weaknesses. There is a three dollar price difference, which is really not a concern for me."

"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."

Comments

Re:In Car MP3 Player Still seems like the best bet

[jglow]

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....

Top 5 Signs That Sirius Is The Way To Go

[coloradorange]

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.

Re:Sirius vs. XM

[iiii]

The three to two satellite comparison is not a fair comparison. XM's satellites are in geo-stationary orbit, i.e. the stay over the same spot on the earth, whereas Sirius has three birds in lower orbits in a pattern that they say keeps N. America covered.

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)

About the satelites

[nadador]

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.

watch what you buy.

[Lumpy]

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.

XM has satellite problems

[mikethegeek]

Don't forget that XM has defective Boeing satellites, ones that have rapid degeneration of the solar array.

http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2101_893 71 1

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.