Slashdot Mirror
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."
That's good if all you care about is music. If you also want news, an MP3 player won't help much.
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..
I am not in the market for one of these right now, but if I were, it would be a hard decision. Based on the business models and actions of the two companies, I would prefer to be giving my monthly usage fee to Sirius. I don't like the XM's idea of almost no, if any commercial free stations. They seem too money hungry. For example, they only have two satalites up there. Sirius has three, which offers them some redundancy if one craps out on them.
Sirius to me seems to be the more professional of the two, where XM seem to be the "Clear Channels version" of the two. That is how I have always thought of them, which is interesting since this is my first finding out Clear Channels is a part owner.
I wouldn't give my money to XM if I have a viable choice. Remember, XM has had a head start as well, give Sirius a little time to get underway, then we can do a more fair comparison.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I've had XM in my Chevy C/K-1500 for about three months now and I've been very happy with it. If you listen to the radio a lot, or travel a lot in the car, or live in the boondocks, I would recommend XM Radio. Here are the basics; you need a deck that is XM ready, or a system that has an adapter, an antenna, and a receiver. The receiver is a boring box that goes somewhere out of sight in my case, the antenna is small and went on the roof, and the deck replaced my old crappy Delco built in 1987. The quality of the programming can't be beat, and it is very high quality sound. What I have preset on my deck. 10 40 41 42 44 65 The guts of the system My CD Player My Satellite Receiver My Antenna XM Radio Rock and Roll Very happy with the service and the programming.
I didn't like Sirius... for whatever reason I don't remember.
;)
The stake of Clear Channel in XM has very little to do with it. XM is mostly managed by GM and subsidiaries (like Hughes, aka DirecTV). The reason Clear Channel is involved is provide some of their local stations (like LA Kiss FM) onto the XM radio waves, however there are only 4-5 of these out of 100 channels.
There are also about 30 different "talk", but not your normal talk. You can get CNN, MSNBC, Weather channel, ESPN, CNN-SI, and various other "news" stations and the such. Basically, CNN Is just a stream of CNN Headline News, but it's nice to keep up on the news if need be.
Heck, XM even has Bluegrass if yer into it
And to be honest, XM does cut out like if you get stopped under a bridge, it takes a second to find it's way around or if you pass in between a couple big trucks. Basically, if your antenna gets blocked by any metal objects, it'll go out for a couple seconds until it switches to the other satelite.
It seems to me that before you take the plunge and get one of these things, your first priority should be figuring out, not the feature set, but if either company is likely to survive. Both XM and Sirius are gushing money (both lost over five bucks per share last quarter.)
What a drag it would be to spend 500+ dollars to install a system into your car's dashboard, and then have to rip it out in a couple years if the company goes belly up. At their current burn rate, I'd be willing to bet that at least one of the two companies will fail.
Plus, keep in mind that once you install one of these systems, you are going to be held hostage to any rate increases down the road (pun not intended.)
I personally think these companies took off during the go-go optimism of two years ago. For the money you'd spend on one of these things, you could get one of those hundred-CD units that goes into your trunk, and never worry about the company going belly-up.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Rather than looking at the technology or costs, why not look into the business health of each company. I think if you are going to be making an investment, youwant to be picking the one that is going to have staying power.
The Motly Fool recently shorted sirius believing their company to be overvalued. (That is not to say that their company will fail, stock price doesn't necessarily equate business health) The fool has quite a bit of discussion on each company.
It's a an important perspective.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
This is a News for Nerds site, and Nerds everywhere are hurting, ravaged by the downturn in tech stocks and reduced spending by speculative investors everywhere. Instead we need articles on the proper techniques for dumpster diving and living on the "Second Harvest." That's the Stuff that Matters right now.
(jj)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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.
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.
Holy crap! You actually BOUGHT an Aztek? I've made cars out of Lego's that look better than those!
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