XM PCR Control Program for Mac OS X

nsayer writes "I'm a fan of XM Radio. The least expensive XM radio you can get is the XM PCR, which is powered and controlled over a USB connection to a host PC (the audio does not, however, come back across the USB connection. It's just got an analog line-out jack). Unfortunately, the only software they give you is for Windows. But fortunately, it's been reverse engineered, so I was able to write MacXM. At this point, it is very stable and easy to use, and so far as I know it is the only XM radio software that integrates with the iTunes music store (click a button and iTunes pops up with a search for the current song title and artist)."

Comments

XM radio

[JelloG3]

thanks to the people who love macs, yet another product that people made for windows, and was saved and ported to the Mac =D

Re:XM radio

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I agree 100%. If they've already put together the service, why not make it available to as many folks as possible? Why require this funky dongle, instead of just an MP3 stream that I can get anywhere that I have internet access?

If the streams were good enough, yeah, I might be willing to pay the $10/month or whatever. But I sure as hell am not going to buy more hardware. I suppose it's there to prevent rebroadcast of their signal--but that would take more work to circumvent than I think most people would be willing to put forth.

Re:XM radio

[TellarHK]

When you've spent a few billion to put the two biggest commercial satellites ever built into orbit, you tend to get a bit protective of your profit stream. XM is a -great- thing to have, I've had a unit in my car for about the past year. They use something like a 192Kbps AAC stream from the satellite down, if I recall correctly. Very good quality, even on the Bose system in my car.

Re:XM radio

[tackaberry]

I agree completely, it is a great_improvement, over today's commercial radio. With all of the media consolidation, voice-tracking, endless commercials, and super-tight playlists, there is very little out there that I find appealing.

The station I listen to the most is public-supported WFUV. Most of the other stations in NYC are horrible. If I'm not listening to 'FUV, I'm listening to my iPod.

Satellite radio, meets the gap by offering the breadth of programming that is absent in today's commercial radio. However, as a new technology there is a steep adoption curve, and with all of the capital costs involved, subscriber base is the most important measurement. Instead of charging for each unit, they may be better off charging per customer, and allow them to use multiple units (what is their increased marginal cost - I can only listen to one radio at a time). Streaming via iTunes could be another revenue stream. I can sample their service, without having to spend a lot of money for a receiver. If I like it, chances are, I'm more inclined to put a receiver in my car.

I can't recall where I read it, but somewhere I recall reading that Apple users are more inclined to embrace new technologies, and a great percentage of Apple users have broadband versus Windows users.

If they are using AAC, there is no excuse to use the best Mac music client.

Re:XM radio

[wolrahnaes]

Acidus (yes the same Acidus from the Blackboard stuff) had written a paper on XM Radio. It is available here.

He had some thoughts on the format and quality of XM streams.

=Compression=
The number of theories of the compression schemes that XM uses is around the
number of Grassy Knoll theories. MP2, MP3, AMBE, AAC, the list goes on and on. A
few things are known. XM Radio had a contract with Digital Voice Systems, Inc to
use their AMBE (Advanced Multi-Band Excitation) speech compression algorithm.
The XM Radio Customer Agreement states that the AMBE technology in their product
is copyrighted and licensed for their use. That makes it safe to say that AMBE
is used at least in part to compress the speech-only channels. Since the STA450
has a built in EPAC decoder, it is safe to assume that at least a bulk of the
music is encoded with this algorithm. This conforms to a claim made by an XM
engineer that their compression technology is similar to Mpeg-4.

Re:XM radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Your remarks are those of a person who obviously hasn't tried the product. XM will have 1.3-1.4M subscribers by year end. Now, it takes a lot more (5M) to break even, but a million cars will be factory equipped with XM for '04, and we know that historically, 70-75% of those million become paying subscribers. Furthermore, we know that "subscriber churn" is in the area of 1% -- low, by ANY standard. The bottom line is it is largely a matter of getting people to try the product. Once they do, they can't get by without it. There simply is no comparison between satellite radio and traditional FM. I have several thousand CDs in my collection and have not purchased six in the 18 months I've had XM. It is that good. Anyway, it is pretty clear the market is there and is growing extremely fast.

But For How Long ... ?

[paxcirca]

I'm glad to see Windows-only products made available to Mac users. XM Radio, though, isn't in great financial shape.

Is this the future of the "integrated" app?

[amichalo]

This is an interesting application - not that it enables a Mac to use a PC product, nor that it is for the XM radio, though both are note worthy.

This application is interesting because it is integrated with another application (iTunes). It is the second such "Integrated Applicaiton" application recently, as Quicken 2004 will integrate with iCal as well.

We have had this in part for a while - click a Mailto: tag and Outlook Express launches - but I am talking about more tight integration.

I am a huge fan of this type of integration. One of my favorite features of Apple's "Mail" is that when iChat is running, and a person who's e-mail address and IM address are in "Address Book" is on-line, there is a little green icon in "Mail" that lets you know so instead of sending them an e-mail, you have the option to click the icon ("iCon") and chat in iChat. Three apps, iChat, Address Book, and Mail, working together to deliver functionality none could deliver otherwise.

So are we seeing a trend? Is this in kind with other great technologies like Web Objects (what MS has rebranded as .NET) or is this a new phanominon born out of Apple's own developer network?

Whatever it is, I would like to see more of it. In what other ways could applicaitons be more tightly integrated amongst eachother?

An Apple a day keeps the BSD away.

Re:Is this the future of the "integrated" app?

[Da Penguin]

There are loads of such integration, thanks to the great design of Cocoa and Applescript. My favorite is Clutter, which automatically retrieves cover art for what you are playing in iTunes (plus loads of other features).

But you are right in that integration is (hopefully) the way of the future. It's happened more than a couple of times that I wanted to make something, and ended up building it around an existing program like the above.

And for those who do not know, almost all of the iApps have hooks so that other programs can, say, reference the itunes library, update the address book, modify pictures in your album . . .

Re:Is this the future of the "integrated" app?

[Da Penguin]

> Just thought I might point out that when Apple integrates
> products for the end user's convenience, they're
> innovators and geniuses, best thing since sliced bread,
> etc... But when Microsoft does the same thing, they're
> abusive monopolists who crush the little guy.

Apple doesn't integrate their apps into the OS. Apple integrates the many apps together with publically accessible APIs, so that other people may do the same.

Plus many times when they come up with some useful functionality, they put it into the API so that others may profit from their work.

So much for the marketing people

[SuperBanana]

At this point, it is very stable and easy to use, and so far as I know it is the only XM radio software that integrates with the iTunes music store (click a button and iTunes pops up with a search for the current song title and artist).

I love it. $50 says Apple and XM spent weeks having their Little People negotiate over it all...and this guy's just gone and done it :-)

Re:So much for the marketing people

[proj_2501]

I would not be terribly surprised if Apple just paid the guy off and started including this thing in a future release of iTunes, although it would probably take a couple generations before this happened.

Several additions to Mac OS 7.5 came directly from shareware programs. The Menu Bar Clock was originally SuperClock! which was distributed with a Macworld book. The submenus under the Apple Menu were also available as a shareware add-on, as were the PopupFolders (when you double-click on a folder and hold down the mouse button, the folder opens up up in a window right under the pointer)