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Satellite Radio Systems Compared
The NYT has a review/comparison of XM radio and Sirius, the two systems of digital satellite radio. Not everyone wants to pay for radio, but I guess if you spend enough time listening to it, maybe it's worthwhile.
Everyone supports XM, nobody supports Sirius. Just get XM and don't look like a betamax weenie. :-)
Yeah, I'd buy that for $10. Hmm... FP?
This sig no verb.
Delphi, the major maker of XM receivers has announced that they are moving all product design and engineering offshore because workers in the USA are paid too much.
You may want to take that into account when picking a system.
My folks just built a log home in an area where you can not get any cellular signal. You can barely pickup the nearest radio stations, and that's only if you hold your nose just right. TV via antenna is next to impossible thanks to our hills that surround the home. Satelitte isn't just used by radio aficionados. Real folks like you and I sometimes need it.
Google Link
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
They sound the same to me, and have the same selection of stations. This is largely due to the fact I own neither.
I wonder if the RIAA feels the same way about this as normal RF radio? Will satallite radio stations need to pay for higher fees to play copyrighted music than normal radio?
That is assuming the Sat radio is of much higher quality than the RF radio and that dubbing music off the radio is a much higher risk for the RIAA.
Of course, this only really applies to music stations and not news stations etc...
not worth it. You'd have to spend quite a bit of time in your vehicle to make staellite radio worth the cost that it is now. One may as well invest in a multi-disc changer that reads MP3 discs. This way you can have hours upon hours of music that you choose, commercial free. Hopefully, if/when a song sharing service comes around that is legal and not stomped by the RIAA, people will pay the cost per song, be able to burn them all to CD, and then listen in the car. I don't see how paying a monthy fee for satellite radio is even justified when we already have the technology to give ourselves hours of music on a single CD. IMHO, staellite radio hasn't really taken off, and I don't think it ever will. It just seems like a bad trend.
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
quite possibly the funniest thing I've seen on slashdot in weeks
This I did not know. Is there a comprehensive list of companies that do this? I want to know who to support and who to tell to piss off.
Good thing i cant afford any of these anyway.
Yeah, its somewhat OT. Shutupp.
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
The bottom line, for those needing a quick answer, is Sirius is superior in sound quality, features(free streaming from their website!), and channel quality(better music, no commercials, better talk). XM has a few more channels that make very little difference to the end result (read on).
After careful review of both systems, Sirius came out the winnner, as I have said. The channels are laid out well, lack commercials, sound great, and are streamed on the internet. The only disadvantage of Sirius was its oft-sited lack of Nascar, which they seem to be trying to remedy. Also, XM has an extra comedy channel (it's boring, and features older, censored comedy), and a few more "experimental" music channels which most will find totally useless. Surfing XM for music is often like surfing the regular (terrestrial) radio in a large city-you get nothing but frustration. It's no wonder XM doesn't stream live on the net so that you can try before you buy. Also, XM's channel layout was unfriendly, in my opinion.
The greatest and most dizzying drawback in comparing the two, however, are the staggeringly stupid and annoying XM commercials. Not necessarily the corporate commercials that come from outside companies (which are annoying in an expected way), but the ridiculous and loud in-house XM stuff that makes you have to turn down your radio really quick when you've had it up loud-especially with the windows open (yes, they are that embarrassing). This, and the better performance of Sirius, was the deciding factor in my cancelling XM.
XM, however, holds their own and can satisfy a customer with some decent music and a fair selection of Talk. If not for Sirius, I would have kept XM, I think; probably because it IS nice to listen to the same station no matter where you go. Yet, as is the way of competition, Sirius has offered everything good that XM does and DONE IT RIGHT. Sirius outshines in the talk category, with a variety of Right and Left-wing shows, all of the useful talk channels XM has, and NPR, PRI, and a well laid-out channel plan.
XM does a bit better in the design of their customer care website. Sirius also has a customer care website, but it is not as robust (less detail). However, XM doesn't have streaming audio on its website-apparently we all have to pay XM $6.99 extra in additon to buying another $200 receiver for the house. In addition to the crappy commercials, this is probably where the corporate influence of XM being part-owned by ClearChannel and GM shows. (Clearchannel is responsible for the reason regular radio is so terrible).
One other interesting tidbit is that I was able to receive both services with an antenna hidden below the rear-deck of my car-made possible probably because it has a large rear-window at a steep angle. Sound quality was the same wherever the antenna was placed-inside or outside-of course. I understand that there was a professional review of XM vs. Sirius and that XM was said to have better sound, but the superiority of Sirius was glaring in my test. I say A-B it at a store with XM, if you can, on the same system. Do a channel comparison, too-I'm sure you'll see that what I've written is the case.
Good luck, and, for my two cents, I would support Sirius unless XM does an about-face. XM may be cheaper by a few bucks, but trust me: you get what you pay for.
Is there censorship???
That's the one thing that bugs me more than anything else about an AM / FM radio. When I listen to songs, I'm tired of the FCC regulating stations, and butchering songs I would otherwise appreciate into beeps, buzzes, silent space, and otherwise crap FX.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I couldn't care less about having a radio station that I could bring with me across the country. I'm more concerned about
a) Having a radio station not play the same thing 20x a day and
b) Having them NOT butcher the song.
Of course, I've been to all the places, Best Buy, etc and ask them. They don't know. I don't have any friends with this device.
So for now, it's a no go. Not until I know that it's uncensored, and always will be that way.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I rarely turn on the 'ole AM/FM radio any more. I have three receivers. One in my car, one at home and one at work. I've been blessed with being near one of XM's terrestrial repeaters so for most of the time needing a line-of-sight to either Rock or Roll (XM's satellites) is not needed. I compared XM and Sirius (although, Sirius was not out at the time when I went with XM) and decided to go with XM in the end. I haven't looked back since then. I know some people will whine, "I'll never pay for radio!" but I've turned so many friends who have said those exact same words to, "This one channel on XM radio is worth ten bucks a month ALONE!" ...
Everything today is dominated subscriptions.
Every software company has these subscription software developers network.
Every other game is becoming subscription based. I am glad sims online is failing.
Every good radio frequency is subscription based.
Soon public bathrooms will be subscription based. The only thing that needs subscription is magazines.
XM uses two geostationary satellites, has commercials, is 9.99 a month.
Sirius uses three geosynchronous satellites, has no commercials, is 12.99 a month. You can listen via streaming on your PC if you are a subscriber.
I beleive that Sirius would provide better coverage due to its three satellite system because the angle is much less. No commercials is cool, as is a lifetime subscription option.
A family member has XM, and it sounds highly compressed. It drove me crazy!
Which one runs Linux?
... for a while now and I have to say I like it, I have to drive about an hour to and from work and spend at least 2 hours a day driving places (cause of I-4 construction) and XM really makes it fly by. At first I didn't think it would really be worth it, but a reciever came with my car, and it was only 10$ a month so I tried it and can't get enough of Uncensored Comedy, XM Live, Fred, XMLM, and XMU! If you spend anytime listening to the radio it's definatly worth it to avoid the same old FM/AM junk.
Radio used to be a wonderful local medium. Anywhere in the country you'd here local accents talking about local events advertising local businesses and appealing to local tastes in music. Even well into the era of media conglomerates, radio was still by-and-large a small-scale operation.
Clearchannel and the whole deregulation mess has pretty well ended that. Aside from a few AM and college stations, radio has about as much identifyable personality as network television. And now proponents of Big Radio can point to the few remaining independents, by and large willfully obscure and pretentious holdouts, as examples of why small radio is no longer relevant.
Satellite Radio is probably good for a lot of reasons, but it certainly will do nothing to slow the gradual blending of America's cultural palette into one big swath of homogenous gray.
I've only lived in two places in my life. I'm about to take a two month long cross-country drive. I'm seriously worried that I'm not going to see (or hear) anything unfamiliar.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Actually, I've had a few girls comment on my Tux hoodie.
I'm just waiting for someone to find a way to hack (yeah, crack, i know) XM radio. I'm sure its possible, probably something like what direct-tv does but i havent had any experience with these devices yet.
has anyone seen any or had anything experiences regarding this?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
my sat tv includes about 40 music channels, most of them are commercial free, focused on different styles, and some of them are just popular FM stations.
Seriously, though, I'm a little tired of the "why would anybody want to pay for that" attitude around here. It's a service, about the same value as a newspaper subscription, and priced accordingly.
Why does Slashdot seem to be getting more and more parochial?
Thanks for the info . . . you own a Mac, don't you?
I just went out and bought my Father the XM Delphi SkyFi at Circuit City and the Car Kit (tape adapter (yuck), cigarette plug adapter, and mag mount antenna.
I'm also going to get him an adapter from Blitz Safe which gives you a muchhigher quality sound. Basically it plugs into the proprietary CD changer port on the back of the factory radio and has RCA plugs (or a 1/4" phono iirc) on the other end.
When deciding between XM and Sirius I found this page to be a good comparison between the two.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I listen to Sirius everyday at work for about 4-8 hours a day. Now that I have it, I would say that I would have to quit my job if I ever could not listen to it for some reason. I fly aerial surveying missions, and it can get very boring up there with nothing to do. Now I have a way to have entertainment anywhere in the country, even in the middle of the desert at 12000 feet!!
I have 100 channels to chose from, and have yet to get bored of the 5 or 6 I listen to regularly. I personally think Sirius is much better than XM, mainly for these "streams" as they call them: 2 NPRs, PRI and JamOn. There defiantly is a reason to pay for radio!
Unfortunately, none of the satellites give reception to us here in Honolulu.
Well, if you want to be legal while sampling a large music selection, you either spend $10 a month for a subscription to XM and listen to hundreds of songs across a myriad of genres from unsigned artists to punk rock to electronica to blues to Indian pop (well, they got rid of that station, actually, so no more Dahler Mehndi for me), or you could take that $10 and buy ten songs from iTunes.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Am I the only one that did a double take on reading:
...ohhhhh yes that's how I like it mmmmmhm....."
"Neither satellite radio company promises to freeze its current prices or percentage of ads. XM, in fact, already offers the first premium premium channel - a Playboy channel for an additional $3 monthly, the first step toward a future filled with tiered, ever more expensive packages."
I mean what's ON that station....
"ooh yeah baby, that's it, uh huh, faster, ohh yeah...**and now a message from Mr. Hefner: Please open your eyes and pay attention to the road while driving, thank you**
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
After I graduated from school about two years ago, I took most of my graduation gift money and decked out a stereo in my car. (No, you can't hear it 4 miles away, it's conservative, but definitely "full range")
One of the options I chose to add was XM Radio. I wasn't happy with the way Sirius was panning out (back then they didn't even have coast-to-coast) and XM was $10/mo as opposed to Sirius's $13/mo.
I got some of the first XM equipment from Pioneer, including a head unit, reciever and antenna. None of that FM modulator crap. I set it all up, activated the account, and i've been happy ever since.
All of the channels are great, depending on what you want to listen to. I never knew 10 different genres of rock existed until XM. Hell, Bluegrass has it's own channel. Some are commercial free, the others have WAY less commercials than regular AM/FM Radio.
Personally, I listen to Top 20, "Ethel" which is 90s alternative, CNN Headline News and the Comedy channel. The Comedy channel is COMPLETELY UNCENSORED. When I say anything goes, I *mean* it. pussy this, fuck that, shit on you, it never ends. It definitely makes the ride to work seem shorter.
Here I am two years later with the same equipment and the same subscription and I'm still paying for it. If you're tired of listening to CDs or AM/FM and just want something else to listen to, XM Radio is definitely the way to go. Car kits are so cheap now that you'd be foolish to pass it up.
My two cents.
-mgahs
now why exactly are the first 3 paragraphs identical to this post from April? Don't tell me you happen to be the same AC and just happened to type up the same review. If I had to guess that comment a few months ago was also lifted from somewhere else, along with the second half of this "review."
I chose to go with Sirius Radio and I've been very pleased with it (I've had it for a bit over a year now). And, in addition to the no-commercials policy on their music stations, one of the major deciding factors for me was ClearChannel's stake in XM.
For those not aware, ClearChannel owns over 1200 stations nationwide and they're one of the major proponents of payola. That's right -- artists get on the air simply because their labels paid for their songs to be played.
I believe that radio play should be based on merit and not deep pockets. And, I don't want to have anything to do with ClearChannel.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Sirius has no commercials. And better channels (my mouth watered at their online trials). And subscribers can stream the music to any computer. Consider the large amount of time our soceity spends in front of the computer and the luxury of having excellent music for that entire time.
While I haven't used Sirius yet, I hope to afford it soon. XM seems like the work of monopolistic, commercialistic, record-company-loving businesspeople, rather than music lovers, and their service is inferior. Take a stand for a company that respects its customers by subscribing to Sirius.
OR you could download the songs illegally, ass.
I have an aftermarket Sirius unit in my 2003 Chevrolet Silverado. The variety is absolutely awesome, but in my case the sound quality isn't. The reason for this is that my satellite receiver is connected to my truck's head unit via an FM modulator. The XM receiver integrated into my Mom's Honda Accord sounds dramatically better. If you visit satellite radio fan sites, you'll find that people generally accept the quality of satellite radio if FM modulation is not involved, and are not fond of it otherwise.
Both the XM and Sirius radio streams are compressed to somewhere in the neighborhood of 64kpbs. They sound far better than what one would normally expect at that bitrate (I'm the type of person who encodes MP3s at 256k-320k). I believe each system uses its own proprietary codecs, and both have the capability to update those codecs over time and continue to work with existing equipment. Anyway, back to the point, it's a highly compressed audio stream. Between the compression and FM modulation, the music takes on a very dull sound. I do not think it is worth buying satellite radio unless you can have it direct input into your head unit.
I've finally managed to locate a company ("SoundGate") who makes an adapter to connect my Kenwood sat. receiver directly into the back of the truck's head unit (GM makes this a big PITA, by not providing a direct input unless you speak their proprietary protocol). It shows up this week or next, and I can't wait.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Yes, if you want to be legal you can do something illegal. You're an idiot, aren't you?
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
I can't speak for XM, but Sirius isn't censored. One example that comes to mind is the track "People = Shit" by Slipknot (which I heard on Sirius' metal channel). Not that it's a particularly good track ;), but they left it all in there -- "shit", "motherfucker", "fuck" and so on.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Wow, the part about ClearChannel is enough to make me never again think about getting an XM unit. That'd be like buying penicillin from a prostitute.
I used to listen to shoutcast stations. Chewing up bandwidth, cpu cycles, etc.. Got an XM unit hooked into the line in on the soundcard.. Not only is the quality 100x better than shoutcast or FM radio, but I've got realtime song/album titles, and 100 channels at the roll of a jogwheel.
I myself listen to about 5-6 channels, but hell, I'd pay $10 a month for just 1 or 2 of em!
Asia has Worldspace as its (only) satellite radio provider. Its quite good, and it has a American coverage too.
Ifaik its broadcasted from Washington.
Long, ago, I vowed never again to buy goods that used to made at home, but have had their factories moved overseas by corporate greed. I urge everybody to do the same! Of course, this limits your social options, since U.S. made clothes are hard to find...
The good news is that when you visit a new area, you can at least set the radio presets in your rental car to be analogous to your favorite stations from home. ;-)
The Portland Oregon Best Buy near the I205 bridge has both XM and Sierus live in the store. Check your area. One of the stores may have a working system. I guess the pig in a poke syndrone has kept lots of buyers away. Best Buy at least in the Portland area is adressing the issue.
I saw an earlier article where the biggest demographic for these are long haul truckers. No longer needing to switch stations every 30-45 minutes is a big plus. In town commuters don't have to deal with stations fading out mid program. Commuters often need local road reports. I fall into that catagory. This alone makes it hard to justify the cost of something I wouldn't use much.
The truth shall set you free!
This was my initial review of the XM radio I had bought about a month ago (It is not really a comparison of XM vs Sirius but my initial experience with XM. I listen to XM few hours every day at work and I feel the cost is worth it if you can listen to it for at least an hour a day. Anything less, it is overpriced).
I am copying and pasting the content of my initial review of the Roady XM unit that I had posted on a website:
Great for use at work
I got Roady from a local store a few days ago and so far I like it. I looked at all the available models for XM and Sirius and this was the smallest and reasonably priced. I wanted something to be able to listen to the world news and current affairs and technology news at my desk at work in a concrete building (has some glass windows in 15 feet range). I got this unit and also got an AC to DC power adapter and set it to 6V 600 mA. The included omnidirectional antenna gets okay signal (2 to 3 bars) inthe concrete office building (from some glass windows around at about 15-20 feet. I just plugged the regular headphones instead of the car cassette adapter. This way I can listen to it all day at my desk at work. The unit has an audio level setting to adjust the volume digitally instead of using a rotary knob.It serves my purpose well. As far as quality of programming goes, XM has many more channels with commercials compared to Sirius and those commercials on a paid radio are very annoying. If Sirius hada unit this small that I could just hook up to DC power adapter at my desk and listen directly using my headphones at desk, I would get Sirius by paying $3 extra to get more commercial-free channels. Also, XM has lesser number of news channels. I really wished that they had one channel dedicated to covering a wide variety of news from Reuters, AP (Associated Press) etc in addition to something like CNN Headline news that plays like 5 headlines repeatedly all day long and ignoring so much of news happening around the world. BBC world service is little better but if you just listen to CNN or BBC or Fox News on XM radio, you will see that their websites have so much more news coverage. The radio versions just play the same few items over and over and completely ignore so much of news from around the world.
And there is CNet Radio (technology news channel that plays same show over and over 24x7. You can read it's schedule on XM's website !!
Overall, I bought this unit mainly because of it's small size and small omnidirectional antenna with ability to just plug in DC power adapter and headphones without any extra hookups.
Maybe after a year or so when Sirius units are this small and compact, I will switch to Sirius for better news coverage (Sirius has two NPRchannels) and more commercial-free channels. But for now, this unit serves my needs best primarily for compact size and direct power and headphone hookup.
Remember, XM has commercials on some more channels than sirius and some news channels like CNN, FOx News etc have their own commercials that are on both XM and Sirius!
I never once said anything about "wanting to be legal". You're an elitist asshole, aren't you?
The author of the article says this as if no other companies call their customers users... If I'm not mistaken, ISPs have called their customers users (you're given a user name...) for years.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
These are multinational companies.
Multinational... not simply American.
They are over and beyond nations, governments by definition.
Their power overrides elected, local political institutions, like governments.
There is really not any elected political institution that those multinational, global corporations are accountable for. They are accountable only for their shareholders. But even if you are a shareholder, you have no control over them, unless you own a controlling amount of shares. You don't have to be American citizen to own controlling amount of shares, you can be French or Saudi. And you will give a flying fuck about american or for that matter ANY workers or employees, regardless of their residence or citizenship.
Welcome to the political impotance of the bright global economy.
But they're hardly the problem. CC is a clumsy puppy -- well intentioned, but poorly trained. Since the mid-80's on the FM dial, and the early-90's on the AM dial, there hasn't been a whole lot of variety. Every market has a whacky Morning Zoo show on a heavy metal or top 40 station. They play bits created by a syndicator, and pass them off as "something funny we came up with last night." Then you have the AM stations which are either syndicated AM talk, or satelitte religious programming.
:-) I'm sitting in a station newsroom right now, at work, so I think I know what I'm talking about here. And no, I don't work for Clear Channel.
So, what's Clear Channel done? They're trying to make their AM stations like local TV stations. Local news/issues programs during prime time, and well-known network programming other times. For the music stations, it's even easier. They've got vertical integration among the stations, with playlists based on formats. Go ahead, examine the playlists of stations in the same format owned by companies other than Clear Channel. By and large, it's the same music.
The only real difference between markets is the level of talent and the fit and polish of the delivery. In big markets, you get good jocks and tight production. In small markets, you can hear some pretty awful radio.
As for XM, I've done three cross-country trips in the past two years via auto. I don't think I'd want to do it without an XM receiver. While there is some good local stuff out there, XM is good quality wherever you happen to be, and it's consistent. Montana is big, and sometimes you can't find a station for a couple of hours. I think the talk programming is better on XM than on Sirius, but that's just personal opinion. If you really dig on NPR, Sirius would probalby be more your cup of tea.
But I did in the post you responded to. So, I reiterate, you're an idiot, aren't you?
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
I will agree that Sirius has very good sound quality (I've had Sirius for over a year now, myself). But, just to warn any audiophiles in the audience: compression artifacts can occasionally be heard.
If you enjoy mp3s at 128 kbps and 160 kbps, you have nothing to worry about ;). But, if you're the type that insists on 192+ kbps mp3s, then you may hear artifacts occasionally (though not necessarily on all streams, since some are compressed less than others).
I blogged about this a bit and if my onomatopoeia resonates with you, perhaps you should listen closely to a Sirius radio setup to be sure that their compression choices are acceptable to you:
[From entry http://www.handcoding.com/archives/000413.shtml which I've chosen not to make a link since I'd rather avoid the Slashdotting if I can.]
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Cost of living in Country A is 1000. Cost of living on Country B is 500. Presumably, you have a job in Country A.
In the interest of efficiency, should *your* job be ported to Country B? You, personally.
And when your job is ported to Country B, you personally have to train the Country B personto do you job.
That is what's happening. IBM just announced a shift of 4500 jobs to Country B. Is it still efficient if it's your job?
They plaied South Park's Dreidel song on the Chrismas channel! I mean, if that isn't cool, what is?!
:)
It's even better when you are trying to play pictionary while listening to it!
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Not everyone wants to pay for radio, but I guess if you spend enough time listening to it, maybe it's worthwhile.
For the longest time I thought the same. I began driving recently... Sometimes CDs just get boring (no matter how many you burn xD). Radio at 7am is horrible. There is nothing on besides commercials and Howard Stern (sorry guys, he bores me).
I see why people are paying for radio now. Had I waited to buy my CD deck I would of gotten an XM tuner instead.
_________ Help me get a PSP!
http://www.siriusradio.com/servlet/ContentServer?p agename=Sirius/CachedPage&c=Page&cid=1065475754154
The channel is called Left of Center, free listening for 20 minutes.
I really don't like how XM is in bed with clearchannel, after the FCC approved News Corps buyout of DirecTV I'm afraid to invest in more technology that will just become consolidated and monopolized again.
Really now, if XM hits critical mass their ClearChannel masters will just milk it like they do regular FM. Afterall, you've already bought the tech and have a contract, why not toss in more commercials or play that Sheryl Crow song a few more times this hour. Afterall, the label is paying us.
Clear Channels seems to be loosing it's stake in XM. They used to simulcast KISS FM from LA and now it's turned into an inhouse XM produced station.. with Rick Dees.
They are a minority partner in XM, and are not in control at all..
Peace.
Jim
'Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?'
no - on second thought, please keep it to yourself. it's probably painful.
Um... Sirus may not have commercials for Radioshack or JC Penny's like XM does, but don't kid yourself... they make up for it with promo spots for their own shows... if I hear one more commercial for Pam Anderson's "talk" show on there... I'm going to scream.
The music from Sirus seems much more hit driven. XM has much deeper tracks that they play more routinely. Don't knock it till you try it... They're both great.
Jim
'Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?'
Because aquiring music and burning mixes is a lot of work especially if you'd like to hear new artists you've never heard of yet...
As both of my favorite entertainment acronyms that begin with "N" are on Sirius (namely, NPR and NFL), I'm all about Sirius. My car stereo is due for an update, and Sirius compatibility is topping then list.
I live in a part of the world where I can't tune in the insanely ecclectic interviews and call-in panels on The Connection, or Click and Clack's "Car Talk." I can burn CD's for music, but not for NPR or NFL game play-by-plays. (I heard the Patriots make their goal-line stand on a staticky, faint AM station. I was honking my horn like a madman.)
XM has some really corporate news stuff (read: fluff), and some right-wing talk radio masturbation festivals, but Sirius has that =and= NPR. (Liberal-leaning hosts and commentators, usually, but a stringently centrist editorial policy. PRI and Pacifica are public radio left-wingnuts, but NPR makes damn sure all sides of a story are given their say.)
SoupIsGood Food
The beauty part is that if you don't hear the local road reports anymore, you'll have the satellite radio entertaining you on the extended drive home.
i work at bestbuy and i know pretty much about the satellite radios considering i sell them all day.
Hands down Sirius is the better choice.
First off Sirius has no ads, XM does.
Sirius is 12 a month, XM is 10.
Sirius has 2 satellites, 1 on each coast
and 1 doing a figure 8 over the the
middle of america and mexico.
Sirius has much better satellite service
than XM considering their better satellite
placement, and since XM only has 2.
Also in NYC alone Sirius is better as they
have ground transmitters to carry the signal
throughout the whole city, and they broadcast
from here in NYC.
While I haven't used Sirius yet, I hope to afford it soon. XM seems like the work of monopolistic, commercialistic, record-company-loving businesspeople, rather than music lovers, and their service is inferior. Take a stand for a company that respects its customers by subscribing to Sirius.
If I'm not mistaken, XM is owned in part by the monopolistic, commercialistic, record-company-loving businesspeople known as Clear Channel Communications. You may remember them as the company that's replacing all your local radio stations with prepackaged commercial crap.
just a friendly warning: don't get a sattelite radio receiver expecting to have it installed by a body shop, because it'll cost you an arm and a leg (4 hours labor, at least... more than the cost of unit). But I guess most of you slashdotters would consider self-installation to be a feature :)
From one of my old University buddies: Ars Technica: Satellite Radio Review
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
"XM seems like the work of monopolistic, commercialistic, record-company-loving businesspeople, rather than music lovers"
which is why it will win, of course. It doesn't matter how many music lovers sign up for Sirius. XM will win because they've placed shareholders WAY above the end user, while Sirius the gap appears to be smaller.
I have had XM Radio since the day it went live on the west coast. Its amazing and I just love it. All of my friends get into my truck and are totaly jealous of me. I had to get one from my mother last christmas even, she isnt a techy, but she loves her lil delphi attached to the home stero. She doesnt even listen to her CD's or local radio any more (even though we live in the bay area and have plenty of opitions there).
I commute to and from college via my truck and couldnt live with out it. Its a three hour drive and I loose radio for maybe 10 seconds total during the trip (due to steep and many mountains).
I personally love XM a bunch more over Sirus, but if you havent gotten Xm...GET IT. Its very worth the subscription fee (heck, its cheaper than an ITunes membership).
snowulf.com
I just bought a dvd burner and plan to pick up a ~$40 dvd player that plays mp3s. Most of the ones I've seen have a seperate power supply and I'll build a small power converter so it will be happy with the 12v in my car and then hook up to the aux-in on my pioneer.
Instant 4.7gigs of audio files and a remote control to boot. Even with my wide range of tastes ( some say bizarre) I'll only need a few discs worth to take my entire collection. Simple matter to re-rip all the Beatles albums at higher bitrates too since I'm not trying to cram stuff onto CD-Rs.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
XM? Fasttracker 2?
Head unit? What the fuck is that?
So, they *are* controlled by Hollywood.
Crap. Now the Network is going to win for sure!
Damn, I need to play some Illuminati now...
Everyone who's too lame to login to NYT will read that first comment, probably written by some guy who works for XM.
is the way to go. More channels, costs less, lots of reasons why.
"It is essential that justice be done
I can't speak to what Delphi is doing, but the product design and engineering of XM radio is done in beautiful Boca Raton, Florida, US of A, in a building on Glades Road just off the Florida Turnpike, and they aren't going anywhere. Most of the major movers and shakers in the outfit (both engineering and management) are refugees from Motorola's defunct Paging Products Group, in nearby Boynton Beach, Florida, and have long ties to the area.
I prefer to get home instead of sitting in a freeway parking lot. I like to be able to ditch the jam, hit home on the GPS, hit detour next 5 miles and get home.
If time = money, the GPS paid for itself last year. Gas does = money. The GPS has paid for itself.
The truth shall set you free!
There are people who do spend quite a bit of time in their vehicle. (Fortunatly, I'm no longer one of them.)
While I was a pizza delivery boy (I know, a glamorous job) I was in my car for five to ten hours a day. The same CD got old, fast. I did come to appreciate Public Radio a LOT MORE than I ever had before, but until I realized the pizza delivery thing was only temporary, I very much considered getting a satalite radio. Had I not needed new equipment, I might have paid the $10 a month for the four or five months I'd have used it.
Likewise, I know commuters (my father, for example, who lives in the suburbs of Chicago but works in Chicago) has a one-to-two hour round trip commute every weekday. In addition, his job often takes him outside the city, or down state, adding more time to his car trip. His car, coicidentaly, will be one year old this month and has over 40,000 miles on it. And he bought it new. I'd say that even a half-hour there and a half-hour back, every day of the week, might make a $10 a month charge seem worth it. That's less than the cost of one CD a month, for (just during the commute) twenty hours of listening.
So don't knock it just because YOU don't want it. I agree that, for MOST, a CD player that reads MP3s is a better sollution. Or just the regular old commercial radio. Or nothing at all. But for those who are (by choice or otherwise) in their car a lot, it can make a lot of sense and be a very good expenditure of money.
-Trillian
PS I couldn't help but respond to, "I don't see how paying a monthy fee for satellite radio is even justified when we already have the technology to give ourselves hours of music on a single CD." Unless you're arguing all music should be freely available (which is an idea that, even on Slashdot, few people really push) those hours of music have to be paid for somehow. Lets pretend there's an amazing, RIAA-free music distribution service. Even cheaper than iTunes. Lets say a quarter a song, or five for a dollar. So (while buying in bulk) only twenty cents a song. And lets arbitrarily say three minutes a song (twenty songs per hour). So an hour of music costs four dollars. To buy three new hours of music (and when you're in the car for hours every day three hours of music can run out quickly) costs more than the ten dollars a month of satalite radio.
Granted, if you buy that much music every month, you'll quickly have an amazingly large music collection, and there's something to be said for that. Likewise, you can make your own specific collection, that you hand-pick. But to get that large of a collection, you'll need to take the time and energy to find and download (even if from the comfort of your own home) those sixty songs. That will take SOME time. And making a really good mix takes a LOT of time. And making a mix from lots of songs can actually become harder, because a really good mix requires each song to fit together. So even in a world with inexpensive, downloadable, burnable music, pay-radio doesn't become obselete. It's just an (admitadly) niche market.
is the way to go. XM is run by Clear Channel, of which Saddam Hussein is a sitting board member.
Over here we have a different setup emerging - DAB Digital Radio .
It's static free, there's plenty of content - some of it ad-free - but it's still a local service, with stations like The Groove playing locally on DAB and streaming over the web.
There's no subscription fee, and portable DAB players now available for around 100. Also, the BBC is committed to the new system, with a bunch of new stations only available digitally.
As a transplanted Bostonian, I would definately pay for commercial radio through either of the sat. services. I would love to listen to WEEI or WBZ (Boston sports and talk channels) on a regular basis while I'm living in Richmond, VA. Are there any other transplants who feel the same way about their respective 'home town' stations? Also, for my fellow techies, is there a setup that I don't know about that would allow me to receive these stations?
"Clearchannel is responsible for the reason regular radio is so terrible. "
Hmm...
I recently read an interview with the head of ClearChannel in which he expresses his dismay at the lack of variety in radio. He said he would like to broadcast a station of all his favourite music, but it's not economically viable.
So, according to him, clearchannel is only reacting to the market and providing products that sell. Catch-22?
It will be easy to see if this is true as CC is increasing its presence here in the UK. Mind you, our entertainment is pretty homogenised anyway.
--Nick
You can read about the XM Codecs Here: http://www.xmradio.com/newsroom/screen/pr_2002_04_ 18.html
You probably live in a market where there is a radio station on or near the frequency of your modulator. I agree, however, that FM modulation more or less sucks, but the tape adapters aren't any better. Aiwa used to make radios that had line inputs, but then they went the the ghetto look and I haven't considered them since.
I'm quite frankly very surprised that all radios don't have line inputs.. I wish they did...
It's amazing how many Satellite Communications "experts" subscribe to Slashdot.
1) Working at Best Buy does not make you an authority at judging the effectiveness of a satellite communications network
2) Because your cousin vinny has XM and you didn't like it doesn't mean Sirius is better
3) Likewise, having had XM or Sirius since "day one" doesn't mean your judgement is anything other than layperson opinion
4) There are more than just technical parameters to consider when deploying a satellite network (i.e. business factors matter)
5) Because you think you're an audiophile and encode your MP3's at 320kbps doesn't mean that XM sucks because its streams are 64kbps.
6) More is not necessarily better
Sorry to troll, but this is just ridiculous....
It's a brilliant strategy, really. Local broadcast radio in my area has become almost entirely ClearChannel's prepackaged commercial crap, which is what drove me to get my XM Radio.
:)
Actually, IIRC ClearChannel owns only a small part of XM. You can see CC's fingerprints on XM's more suckful channels, for example. It's more of a risk-hedging strategy on CC's part.
However, my commute wouldn't be the same without my Special X. I've heard Dr. Demento, polka music, Leonard Nimoy & William Shatner....shoot, their ongoing tribute to Christmas is a very refreshing change from Xmas Muzak.
it's great... The comedy stations relieve most of my stress during my 45min commute home. I'm a news buff as well, so I listen to the Fox News channel a good bit. It's too bad you can't pay per station.
What was your username again? -BOFH
That's an interesting position, but can you give any reasons why this is the case?
I can see why subscribing to software is a stupid idea, but when there are legitimate fees associated with a service (such as an online game with a static world, which has to pay for servers) what's the problem with paying a subscription fee?
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
I did a cross-state trip last week with about 4 different radio "zones". I got pretty much the same programming the whole way across thanks to our good friends at ClearChannel. With cloned stations all over, who needs satellite to get the same programming no matter where they are?
I also live in a market where my favorite team doesn't always get coverage (due to proximity to another team's home city). If my team's game isn't shown because of this other team, I'm up a creek.
Sirius says they're offering every NFL game from pre-season through the playoffs. I could easily double the number of games that I can tune into with Sirius. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
The only stream I've ever heard a commercial for Club Pam is on the preview channel, 184. What stream is playing an ad for it?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Ford owns Volvo
and GM owns Saab.
the CD format supports text identifiers for tracks and albums but only some car CD heads seem to support it. why isn't more use made of this?
Agreed, I've heard Cracker's song "It Ain't Gonna Suck Itself" on Sirius Organic Rock a couple of times.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Actually, you have it all backwards. Sirius radio is the home of smaller playalists and lots of repeats. Check out the numerous threads on Siriusbackstage.com about all the repeats that they are complaining about all the time. They even have a terestrial radio consultant, Walter Sabo, who does their music for them with an emphathis on a commerical radio flavor to it.
XM is more for music lovers. 10 more music channels means you have more music per hour than on sirius and they have 3 comedy channels to sirius' one. Check out xmfan.com to see what people say about. You can't understand it unless you hear it. I really only use my 40 gig IPOD for working out now. I don't want to spend all that time burning and categorizing my music into playlists. And yes, I do get bored listening to the same 2500 songs all the time. I'd rather listen to xm's several million song database.
I want a free receiver with my paid subscription.
When XM/Sirius debuted, they were around $300 for a receiver. Pile on top of that the monthly fee, and you have a really expensive way to listen to the radio. Initially most folks didn't want to invest in what could become a paperweight if the service failed.
Both XM and Sirius now have a cute little portable receiver for under $100. Starting to get tempting. I can bring satellite radio with me everywhere I have an aux in port. Less than $100 and I can listen anywhere? Starting to interest me.
So Sirius and XM, how can you get me as a customer? Let me pay for one year of service and give me the receiver free. Cell phone companies do it, you should too. I would gladly pay you for a full year of service and a receiver. After a year, if I don't like the service, I don't feel so bad about it.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
The fact that so many people are willing to pay for our National Public Radio system in the states suggests that there are plenty of people willing to pay for radio--if the quality is there.
I've used both XM and Sirius and I agree with a few of the other posters. I had XM for a month and took it back due to poor sound quality. I would say about 64-96 kbit mp3 quality. Sirius is by no means "CD quality" but it is closer to 128 kbit mp3 quality. That and the lack of commercials make Sirius the better bet in my mind. In addition the free streaming from Sirius is a big plus if you can listen in the office or at home, this makes sirius cheaper in the short run if you compare it to getting XM with 2 base stations(one for car and one for house)
I recently bought an XM receiver online for cheap. Here they sell one for $30, after mail-in rebate. May be tough to complete it before Dec 31, but it is a good deal:
Link to offer
No, I am not affiliated with these people in anyway, just happy with the deal I got.
Tor
I don't see satellite radio with a future. The BBC in Britain have been at the forefront of digital broadcast radio, and for the last few years have been broadcasting many new stations, which can also be picked up by TV cable and FreeView boxes in the UK - and the stations are also online. To me, this is the way forward, and the technology is coming to the US: iBiquity Digital Radio. I think this has a lot of possibilities, and will go a long way to eliminating the hiss and drop-out of AM/FM.
Are you out there in Post Rock country? My lord, by the sound of it, I place you somewhere in the Colby/Hayes area.
For those who don't know, think of the largest fields you've ever seen -- and then multiply it by 50. It's so flat out there, birds are falling out of the sky due because there's no place to land.
...before it goes down the tubes, and sounds like everything else. They'll start out good like FM did, but when they finally build an audience, they'll cheap it out until it sounds just like Clearchannel (which is a major investor, BTW).
if we lose a large amount of IT business here in Europe, I far prefer that money to go to a place like India rather than to the US. The products are cheaper, and it's rather more meaningful to let your money work to help a struggling, up and coming country rather than propping up one of the richest nations on earth.
Right. And you will be just proud as can be as you watch your trade deficit soar because it will be 25 years befor India even thinks about buying much of anything from you.
Your attitude reminds me of all those midwest American developers who were Oh So Supportive of HB1s in the late 90's. While developers from the east coast (NY, NJ, VA, MA) were trying to explain how they were besieged - some staffs were more than 50% Indian) - the dipshits from Iowa and so forth, who had not yet experienced the invasion, blathered on with all the politically correct nonsense.
Funny how perspective and time changes everything. We will see shortly if your idealism hold up because more of Europe's IT is finding its way to Bangalore every day.
If it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!
Jim
'Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?'
Well, who would be more likely to increase the education budget? A Republician or a Democrat?
This is one of the very reasons I read Slashdot so frequently.
I am in the market for a sat radio system (I'm in sales) and after reading that XM is partly owned by Clear Channel, welp, that just made my decision VERY easy.
CC has been *on record* as saying their primary purpose in life is to push ads. They are unapologetic about the fact that they have zero interest in promoting culture or diversity in their "playlists". Not to mention, they are the biggest supporter/supplier of payola, which has already been mentioned.
In other words, this is a no-brainer for me. I hate Clear Channel and will vote with my $$$ this time.
Or if you don't believe Steve Job's tripe and you are down with a subscription, you could subscribe to Rhapsody and be allowed to listen to whatever you want instead of having some corporate idiot dictate their playlist to you.
You still don't get the music permenantly but at least you have complete control over what you listen to, which is pretty good if you are just trying to discover new music.
Now if you want something for the car or something, most people I know just get a CD player and listen to their own personal collection.
Moral of the story: Rhapsody only works on a computer with a broadband connection so you can't listen to it in the car (con), but the car isn't really the best place to discover new music anyway (having to focus on not crashing and all). In return you get to freely explore an entire libary of music for a small monthly fee (pro).
I dunno, personally I'm down with just DLing music via methods with questionable legality.
I'd like to subscribe to both services, but I don't want to have to buy two receivers.
So, are there any receivers that work with both services. Presumably, it would allow you to seamlessly switch back and forth between channels on both services.
If not, then why not?
Any marketrioids out there?
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
This story comes at a great time for me; I've been trying to decide which service to buy. I really don't like XM's ClearChannel leanings - you can get that junk for free in any city in the US. However, Sirius' brochures are a little too anti-mainstream. My main question to Sirius owners is this: do the music channels play some familiar artists, but with more variety and depth in the playlists, or do you hear a lot of obscure stuff that's strange for the sake of being strange?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There are several radio programs I like to listen to, and most are on when I can't (or son't like to ) listen. As an engineer, when I'm doing detailed design or calculations, I can't have distracting talk radio in the background, and I even prefer totally instrumental pieces over vocals. But when I'm drafting, filing, doing cleanup, commuting, or performing the other brainless functions which my day requires I prefer talk radio. Jim Rome, Marketplace, All Things Considered, even Bill O'Reilly (sp?) are all great to have when I want to focus much of my brain on something other than an otherwise boring task.
But I'm only about 50/50 with talk radio when I want it. Why not dial up a recent episode of Jim Rome which I'd missed? Or be able to switch to another show if the one I'm listening to is annoying. Or, better yet, be able to "instant replay" (5-15 minute buffer in 15-30 sec increments) the weather, closings, traffic, news, whatever I just missed. Now that would be great, and easily accomplished with solid state memory, if it could take the read/write cycles necessary. Heck, a 20H version probably wouldn't take more than a 512M card, just the instant replay could easily be done in 16MB.
BTW - I don't have either, but I like the look of the programming on Sirius. I still have a problem justifying another chuck of cash on an ongoing basis. Alas, no Jim Rome.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Clear Channel is FUD spouted by Sirius advocates. First and formost, everyone has to understand that this is like PC vs Mac for users. The vast majority of users of satellite radio are *strong* advocates - XM has a study that shows that subscribers on average demonstrate thier radio more than 10 times a month to other people. So take what you hear about either service, good or bad, with a grain of salt. CC used to own stock of less than 10% in XM. Its now less than 5% and they have sold the rest in a hedge deal. I think it is pretty clear that XM wants to get rid of CC as soon as they can - which is why there are no longer any CC sourced channels on XM.
One thing that's still keeping me from taking the XM plunge is the lack of decent in-dash receivers. Sure, there are plenty of receivers that are "XM Ready" (though they all seem to require an additional $200+ receiver module that I'll have to attach somewhere else in the car). But most of them have only 8- or 16-character displays.
I mean, most cars these days (or so it seems -- all of our last cars at least) have large receiver openings (double-size or so). There's PLENTY of space for a CD / XM receiver with a nice, multi-line display and decent controls. But even the double-DIN receivers from Pioneer still only have 8-character displays. It's crazy.
And I don't even get me started on how most radios these days are just an ugly mess of widgets and doodads with very little thought to function or quality. The best-looking, most functional, radios out there all seem to be original factory radios. And they simply don't have the MP3 / Satellite features.
What I want, basically, is the nice Delphi XM receiver integrated in a double-DIN CD receiver, with aux inputs for my MP3 player, a half-dozen preset buttons, a volume knob, and a tuning / navigation / feature knob. Is that too much to ask? (and, no, I don't want to stick the Delphi receiver somewhere else on my dash -- with my Palm/GPS combo, I've already got more velcro then I'd really like.)
Doesn't XM have a unit with a USB interface? What is the format? Is it MP3? At any rate, it can be streamed to disk. It effectively gives one a very low cost music delivery system. For XM at $10 month it works out to about .7 cents per song (~1400 songs/mo for 1000 cents). This is a lot better than 79/99 cents per song.
I have a Kenwood Here2Anywhere reciever, with a home reciever cradle in my living room, and a reciever cradle in both of my vehicles. One think I must say is that the stock setup for the vehicles SUCK! They come with a tape deck adapter, and my unit bearly puts out enough power to the tape deck that you have to turn the volume all the way up to hear the audio. In my other vehicle, I didn't have a tape deck, so I bought a $45 FM modulator that you have splice into the antenna. This systme works much better, and sound quality is excelent. If you are thinking of purchasing any of the protable units, make sure you have an auxilary audio-in on your car sterio system. If not, don't use the dinky tape deck setup, spring for a FM modulator. The Kenwood FM modulator I purchased uses RCA cables for the audio in. So if you mount an RCA plug set up on your dash, you could use it for not only your satilite system, but you could plug in a CD player, or any other audio device that has an RCA out.
Does either Sirius or XM have an EBM station, along the lines of German EBM Internet Radio?
just did a quick google search and ran accross some indoor satallite radio antennas. Have not seen any reviews yet. here is a link to one: http://www.centurion.com/antennaProd/xm20.asp
I used to think, like you do, that satellite was not worth the money and no one would ever pay for radio stations. That changed last spring.
I have a vintage automobile that only had an original AM radio. I purchased a Sirius add on unit last spring and with a little creative installation put it into my car. My main motivation was cost. I didn't want to put a significant amount of money into the audio system on this car. My cost was about $120 in hardware, less than half what a good multi-disc mp3 changer would have been. I have 24hour commercial free music that works all over the country ( I have been on several road trips in this car since purchasing it ).
The best thing about it is the different genres I do get exposure to. Sirius includes several stations that are out of the mainstream. Indie rock, indie country, bluegrass, jazz, etc... I have listened to some great new music that I would never have heard listening to my own MP3s or even some random file sharing service.
Find coupons in Greeley
I had been looking at Satellite radio for awhile, but always concluded that I did not want to pay $10 - $13 a month for the service... So I never bothered to purchase the equipment.
While cruising one of my daily sites, someone had posted a message that Sears had a Sirius radio package deal... everything you need to get Sirius up and running for $50. I figured, for that price, I couldn't lose.
It tooks 2 months, and Sears finally cancled my order because they realized that the demand for the box set had exceeded the order. I was pissed off. Not because they misjudged the amount of orders that would come in... That's somewhat understandable. I would have let the subject drop right there if that was the problem. But no.. they had CHARGED my card two months ago, and I was thus paying interest (actually, it was a debit card, but Sears didn't know that) for two months on a product I didn't have. That's what really ticked me off... they took my money, used it for 2 months, and then said "oh... sorry, here's your money back, and we won't pay you interest." I wasn't about to stand for that.
I stomped down to my local Sears and bitched up a storm. They finally agreed to cobble together a similar Sirius system and give it to me for the $50 price.
The next day, I installed the system, via the FM modulator and got it hooked up. It was pretty easy to install myself. I had never installed any radio equipment in a vehicle before. Learned quite a bit, actually. Anyway, it fired right up and sounded a lot better than I was expecting considering it was via FM modulator. In fact, it sounded just like my stock head unit.
I'm not a big fan of stock head units, but I have not replaced my current head unit in my vehicle, even though I've had it 3.5 years. Boy... am I glad I waited.
I'm going to be getting a Sirius head unit, so I can plug directly into it. I love the Sirius, and I won't ever be going back to "regular" FM radio again. I will happily pay the $13/mo that I was reluctant to pay after actually using the system. The lack of commercials is so liberating. It's so frigging nice to turn on the radio, and listen without hearing all the bullshit I hear on FM stations. I have about 6 channels I listen to regularly, and I can usually find someone on one of the 6 that I like at any given time. There are a few occasions when all six channels suck, and I will jump around and experiment with other stations.
There are a few nitpicks that I have, though.
First, the fact that Kenwood Sirius tuners are not compatible with Panasonic Sirius tuners is ridiculous. They are both Sirius tuners, they should be compatible with any Sirius head unit. The upside of this is, the Kenwood Sirius tuner is $150, and is what I currently have. The Panasonic tuner is $50. Why is that important? Because all but the most expensive ($500) Kenwood Head Units suck. Really bad. Their LCD displays are like 10 Character, vintage 1990's displays. On the other hand, the Panasonic head unit (983 I think?) has a nice Active Matrix display for $200. That's the head unit I'm going to be buying here after Christmas... but I'm going to have to plunk down an additional $50 for the Panasonic Sirius tuner... which kind of irks me.
The other nitpick I have, which may or may not go away with the new head unit is the fact that channel surfing is exceptionally difficult. It's hard to find the stations you might want to listen to, and skip over the junk you know for sure you don't want to listen to. Currently, on the FM modulator, there's only 6 preset buttons, with 4 different positions. So you can have a total of 24 presets. However, getting to the 2, 3 and 4th position pre-sets is a pain in the ass. So I pretty much stick with the first 6 pre-sets.
Couple the fact that the FM modulator is a Kenwood unit, with it's 10 character display, and it's impossible to have the information you want on the screen up at any given time. You are limited to a portion of the song title, OR
The most important thing to most people is finally being able to hear music on the radio that's worth listening to. In my case XM had the better offerings in two key areas.
First, its "Deep Tracks" channel was MUCH better than the equivalent station (The Vault?) on Sirius--XM plays a good deal truly obscure stuff by modern radio standards (Zappa, for example) while Sirius had mainly the "non-hit" tracks from well-known "classic" artists. Deep Tracks is the closest thing to early 70s FM I could find, if you know what that means.
Second, although perhaps not a big factor with Slashdotheads, the "classic country" music played on XM ("Hank's Place") is WAY, WAY better than the equivalent Sirius channel. (The same is true on Dish Network compared to DirecTV).
These two channels make up 80% of my XM listening time, although I like the eclectic "Fine Tuning" as well. I recently drove round trip from Florida to Nevada (half of that alone), and XM was a godsend.
My new form of entertainment is free books. Project Gutenberg had some mp3 books for a bit - including a few from audiobooks4free.com which are read by humans (the site could be named audiobooks4cheap.com). After downloading a few computer read books, I decided that it was somewhat better to roll my own.
I downloaded festival and notlame, and got them to work under Linux. It takes my Athlon 1800+ about a half hour to convert a book to mp3 - consuming 60 MB to 150 MB. You'll need at least 256 MB RAM.
Choose a book from over 10,000 books.
Download it - 300 KB - 500 KB. This is doable with dialup.
Break it up into chapters. Festival's memory requirements grow with the length of the text to be converted. 512 MB is not enough to convert most books. Also, my car's mp3 player does not remember where you were in the track when you turn off the car. It's impossible to find where you were in a 4 hour track.
Use festival to convert to wav files.
Use notlame to convert to mp3.
When you have enough books, cut a CD.
My script: .txt`
#!/bin/sh
# Convert a book (set of text files) to mp3.
# Current directory, *.txt => *.mp3
for i in *.txt; do
echo $i
A=`basename $i
sed s/_//g $A.t
time text2wave $A.t -o $A.wav
rm -f $A.t
time notlame --silent -h -mm $A.wav $A.mp3
rm -f $A.wav
done
I've glossed over getting festival compiled. I went the route of downloading all available tarballs. Create a new directory, and unpack everything there. Don't forget speech_tools. Compile speech_tools, then festival. Then install.
Getting everything to work is painful enough that it would be worth putting together a knoppix disk that has everything built. Then we'd need a site that can host a binary of an mp3 encoder. I live in one of those countries where I can only download the source and compile it myself. So, I'd have to put together a knoppix disk that runs make... In any case, 256 MB RAM might still be the low end for a knoppix converter. You need a writable hard disk partition (or big enough USB dongle) for the mp3's. If you boot from CD, you need a second drive to cut disks...
When you are all done, there's a learning curve to understanding computer read text. For me, it was three chapters.
The books I've converted run about 4 to 6 hours. I expect to 'read' one per week. I get five or six books per CD. That makes this about $.03 per book. Less if I use rewritable CDs (for which I have previously had little use).
You might notice that I encode books at 128 kbps - mono. From the arithmetic, I expect this to allow about 12 hours of books on a CD. However, I get more like 24 hours. Audiobooks4free has some 32 kbps books. I find the artifacts annoying, but improved the treble is turned down all the way. I have some really, really bad powered speakers from radio shack (powered by 'C' sized batteries). 32 kbps books sound great on it. This suggests that a transform exists that could post-process the 32 kbps decode to remove the artifacts. If the speaker diameter is 2 cm, what would the transform be?
-- Stephen.
Here's what's going to happen: All those "commercial-free" satellite radio stations will start adding commercials when they can't sustain themselves. Then they'll go under. Then you'll see a slashdot article pointing to a web page written by a Stanford professor on how to interface an XM receiver to your toaster.
I thought the lack of CC sourced stations was because neither XM or SIRIUS are licensed to carry any local content.
We are talking about listening in a car here. Can you really differentiate 128kb vs. 192kb at 70 mph on your in-dash unit? (if so, you not only have golden ears, you're driving something way better than my beater!)
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
>Because all of this is beamed from satellites,
>you can drive across the country without ever
>hearing a certain station fade away.
What a load of crap! Every time you go under a bridge/overpass/tunnel/tall bushy tree the signal fades. Yes, FM fades out in long tunnels, but not when I'm under a normal sized overpass. I drove a rental around Palo Alto and the music would cut out when there were large trees along the road that overhang. I can't believe that people pay for this "service".
if I'm not mistaken, XM is owned in part by the monopolistic, commercialistic, record-company-loving businesspeople known as Clear Channel Communications. You may remember them as the company that's replacing all your local radio stations with prepackaged commercial crap
:)
Many billboards in L.A. are owned by Clearchannel
and Viacom (the latter responsible for the zooming
purple V-of-Doom which gave us nightmares when we
were kids.
I work for one of the CC, BB, etc type companies, and we sold out of both a few days ago. Most either dont know either, or come in asking for XM. But, serius has an advantage as its wayyyyy cheaper as an initial investment, and less of a hassle, because their mobile kits have the built in transmitters, and XM has lost a LOT of sales to that exact issue.
I personally would go with XM, but if sirius wasnt 12.99 I would give it a hard think. The fact that you can buy sirius' subscription out right for 399 right now lifetime, tends to draw in most of the wealthy and intelligent buyers. You can't do that with XM, which is another reason they have lost some sales to sirius.
All in all, I like XM's hardware better, but sirius has been smarter on a few design choices, that in the end are hurting XM. We finally got a replacement cigarette adapter that has a builtin FM transmitter for XM products, but that was literally yesterday, and of course it was freaking 35 bucks for the thing, so its still not much of coup.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
This is the reason I will choose Sirius. You get all the NFL games broadcast. Kinda like Sunday Ticket for radio.
XM is one of the great underused deals in the music world. While the initial bill may be expensive, and the service does cost a small monthly fee, it is vastly superior to the modern radio scene (which is generally overproduced crap).
.mp3s, which only a stoned ogre could be expected to enjoy. XM sounda almost as good as CD in terms of quality.
Many of my friends who are much older than me and deeply into music of all varieties are amazed by the richness, quality, and variety of good music available on XM. It is NOTHING like radio, and lacks commercials. Music which they have not even heard released on CD yet (mostly jazz from the 1960s and a lot of vintage rock recordings) are played frequently on some of the XM channels. The variety and depth of music is amazing.
Sound quality is definitely not lacking: most radio stations play compressed 128k
Perhaps Clear Channel is funding XM; however, the finished product trounces normal radio, and offers a better deal musically speaking than the selection you'd find in a CD store!
If XM is such a hip-pop station, why is there such an unbelievable selection of music?
-foo
I have been a very happy XM subscriber since DEC 2001, and everything was great until three months ago when my receiver decided to crap out. Stupid Best Buy service, it takes forever to get anything back, still has it (2+ months) and doesn't know when it will be fixed. The only thing keeping me sane is the fact that I rigged my ipod up to work in my car.
This is a sig, there are many like it, but this is mine.
I had the chance to have dinner with someone in the satellite industry. His take was that Sirius had an edge over XM in technology. Additionally, the polar orbits of Sirius satellites are much higher than XM's geostationary birds and are less suceptable to being blocked by terrain features which certain areas of the country have in abundance.
/. people seem to favor that service over XM.
I have actually listened to XM though (it was on an Avis rental car) and the sound quality I think suffered from the radio itself. As for content, I can't say I was really impressed. XM had some interesting channels, but the majority I wouldn't listen to.
I'm a big music and talk radio buff -- I listen at least 24-34 hours per week -- but I didn't see myself really taking advantage of XM. I'm planning on taking a good look at Sirius to see what they have to offer though. Especially since many of the
When I go on road trips though, it's sometimes nice to pick up a local host just to get a flavor of the region I'm in. But something like Sirius would really increase my choice of selections, which isn't a bad thing at all. It beats listening to an hour of the weather band.
What I'm waiting for is a car radio that has built into it's circuitry the ability to tune to AM, FM, Satellite Radio, TV, Weather Band, Shortwave, CB, and police/fire/ambulance and aviation bands.
On long trips, it will be nice to browse *all* the airwaves. Of course I'll need about 100 presets.
-Crolis
of the two systems was published in the October, 2003 issue of Nuts & Volts Magazine. It even had a neat picture that goes 3D when you cross your eyes!
www.nutsvolts.com
Dan Danknick
Technical Editor
I've figured out the "Killer" app for Satellite Radio.
That's the ONE app/program that will make the listenership/subscriber-ship *E*X*P*L*O*D*E.
Ready? Hold onto your seats. O&A.
O&A for those of you who never heard, are OPIE and Anthony, 2 DJ's in NY (originally from Boston),
who were fired in NY, and from their nationally syndicated (24 cities in 6 months!) radio show for
sponsoring a "sex for sam" (adams) contest, in which one couple went into St. Patrick's Cathedral
and were "going at it" in the back.
Lo and behold, DID you know that was actually the THIRD time that a couple was in there ? It just happened to be the FIRST time anyone caught on.
At any rate, the National press caught the story, and because of the "GOOD work" of the national catholic defense agency, the pair was fired.
Now. Mind you. Fans (and they) have a saying, that paybacks are a bitch, and that they never lose.
They've been paid on their contract which infinity radio owns (and NOT fired) for 1.5 years now, with the contract scheduled to end in May of 2004.
Infinity did NOT release them so another company could use them, but actually paid them the 3mil (apiece) per year under the last contract.
Back to Topic?--
What's the killer application?
UNCENSORED acccess to their show via Satellite radio.
bear out some more preliminary facts.
1) O&A made a road trip the last spring they were on to WONA, a small town radio station.
2) Remember, They're too hot to put on the air
3) WNEW-FM (their former home in NYC, now a joke that is broadcasting 24X7 automated Christmas Music) no longer has any listnership loyality.
3) Infinity (I predict) will:
3a) Trade/buy the call letters wnew to WONA-AM,FM
3b) Lease the 102.7 frequency to Opie and Anthony
in lieu of payment for their services
3b1) Infinity (of course) will handle commercials, and syndication of show fore a % fee.
3c) Infinity will now be rid of WNEW, and the frequency
3d) Infinity will no longer have an liability or ability to "punish" "da boyz"
SATELLITE radio: (right we almost forgot.)
Now. The boys will come back on in 2 formats
FREE. the way it used to be. VERY highly edited for Public airwaves
PAY (1a): A full UNEDITED broadcast over satellite radio with live feed to those who pay a $X.xx per month fee (over the normal sub. price
Pay (1b): As an added incentive to those in their target market, there will be a Permanent live studio camera in their studio which will be FREE to the Satellite radio subscribers.
THUS: summarazing:
*FCC gets to get NOTHING from future FINE threats.
*O&A get a new censorship proof channel to talk
*O&A get a new subscriber revenue stream
*Satellite radio gets a huge rush of 18-50 yr old men who have the market ability to spend the 100-500 plus subscription fees to get a live unedited feed of O&A.
* stations in other cities also get the edited O&A feed.
*O&A never need to do another live commercial (as they'll be chatting during commercials during the free broadcast to subscribers.[They HATE commercials!]
* O&A get to do whatever they want on rest of station.
* O&A win in the end.
* I'm sure a hell of a lot of bad words will be said (and listened to) on satellite systems nationwide.
SO.. I think that this is a viable Killer application and I know that I for one will be buying my FIRST satellite receiver when it happens!
signed.. melksuckz
If you get an MP3 discman and an adaptor, which is what I went with. My Philips player was around $120 a few years ago, IIRC.
:) We're currently on hiatus until the spring semester, but you can still get a good day's worth of unique music out of the DJ-TRON 3000.
Of course, I would love for people to do this, since the site linked in my sig is a Shoutcast (well, icecast) stream
[Sorry, it's 64k stereo until we move it to the nicer server room; should be this winter. I don't think it sounds awful though, and I was a music major (with emphasis on recording for a while).]
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I've had both services myself and have had a sub par experience with Sirius. When I first decided to go with satellite radio I compared the 2 services Sirius looks better, so about a week after Sirius was available on the east cost (believe it or not in the very early days of Sirius you could not subscribe to it if you didn't live in the Midwest) I got a Kenwood system. I loved it, then about 3 months into having Sirius the satellite radio stops working. To make a long story short I decided Kenwood was cheap junk I was not going to get a working Kenwood Sirius satellite radio working. So I wanted Satellite radio and an MP3 disc player in the same unit, at the time Clarion was the only other manufacture of Sirius components and they didn't make that combination. So It decided to go with Alpine and XM.
This is where Sirius lost me as a customer for good; originally, I had purchased a years worth of Sirius service at a discounted rate. I would think it is fair for them to refund me (or even give me a credit) for the service period I'm not going to use, given I had equipment failure. Well they would not do it. I had every intention of someday when the equipment had the features and quality I wanted to return to Sirius but that will not happen thanks their lame policies.
For anyone who wants to risk being ripped off by Sirius they are for the most part better then XM in terms of quality of programming.
My ratings comparison between Sirius on a Kenwood system vs XM on an alpine (in the same car with the same set of speakers and amps)
Sound quality: I would give XM the advantage (allot of that maybe the fact that this alpine was a much nicer head unit then the Kenwood)
Signal Strength: For those who have been in a car with satellite radio you know that sometime, you lose signal for a second or 2 going under overpasses or in tickly wood area or next to tall buildings or in a tunnel. The XM system was leaps and bonds better at not losing signal then was the Sirius system but the Sirius system did recover a little quicker then the XM system.
Station layout: Sirius is much more logical then XM, Although XM you can browse by category which was not possible with my Sirius System.
Programming quality ( I mainly listen to Rock and House)
Overall Sirius is better
For Rock Sirius is definitely the best, the stations are laid out better and more clearly defined.
For Electronic Music XM is definitely better (Although I've noticed Sirius has rearranged there Electronic music stations since I have regularly listened). XM 80 and XM 82 have some great world class DJs, and shows broadcast from all over the world. Much better then Sirius.
For Sports: Advantage FM and AM, Both Sirius and XM suck for sports, most games are blacked out on ESPN radio and Fox Sports Radio but if you want sports talk they pretty much carry the same stations. If you like NSCAR, which I don't, Sirius seems to be a big supporter NASCAR and you can listen to the races on Sirius.
Value: Sirius does cost more but no commercial (for music stations at least) but from time to time may rip you off. If you aren't ripped off and you have a single receiver, Sirius is probably the way to go. XM on the other hand doesn't charge full price fro a second receiver like Sirius.
The companies themselves: They both suck, Sirius may rip you off and XM is in bed with clear channel.
Good news for all. link
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
Preach on, brother! Crap is exactly what I heard when I tried out XM. Having 100 more channels of the same crap I can hear on my FM dial is not what's going to bring me in. Not to mention that XM cuts out in many places where I live (Puget Sound area of Washington). XM sucks!
Most of us who live in major metro areas can already find sports stations, rap stations, left & right talk stations, Spanish language stations, etc.
Yes, it's nice to have it with somewhat fewer ads and somewhat more thinly sliced into genres, but unless I lived in a rural area or did a lot of cross-country driving, it just wouldn't be worth it to have just an incremental improvement in what I already get on any radio, for free.
What I'm really looking for is programming that I simply can't get at all because even in the largest metro area there's still not a critical mass of people who would want it.
I want the "scientific conference channel". I want the "computer science lecture" channel. I want the "science news and talk" channel. I want a channel devoted to world history lectures.
I want what I had in Japan on cable radio: a dedicated "learn (Chinese|French|Korean|...) language" channel for each of ten or so major languages (that's ten or so separate channels), with a daily half-hour lesson that repeats 48 times over 24 hours, so you can tune in at any time and hear the day's lesson. (Accompanying textbook available at every newsstand.)
I want the leading talk radio and local music stations in every country on earth with a radio station to be piped through on their own dedicated channels. On a cold winter day, stuck in traffic, I'd like to be able to tune in to a live radio broadcast from Tahiti, practice my French, and dream of the islands.
Since I don't see that happening soon, I think I'll just hope for the infrastructure for an always-on Internet connection from the car and I'll hope streaming audio on the Net will grow into what I'm looking for.
In the meantime, any suggestions for a good way to record streaming RealAudio into MP3 files that I can then load into a portable MP3 player? I think that's going to be my "satellite radio" if I can figure out a convenient, automated way to do it.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Multi Billion dollar companies can't happen without a profit motive.
XM's commercials are relatively few (2 minutes/hour, maximum, vs. 20 minutes/hour for FM). But XM's selection of music is so much better than Sirius' that there is really no comparison. Further, XM's hardware is lightyears ahead.
Those who think they want to stream Sirius's stuff via Internet, have a look at XM's PCR. Makes a ton more sense, cheap, requires no bandwidth, much better sound quality.
I have both services. If you want football or talk, I agree Sirius is the choice. But for music, XM is the only game in town.
I have had XM for about 9 months at home (I live in the mountains with no FM) When purchasing, I made my decision largely on channel choices and recommendations of friends. It took a couple a months to get the "flavor of the system" and while there are 101 channels, I only listen to a few regularly. For example XM168 has a weekly web guide that shows the live concerts they broadcast 24 X 7 mostly from the BBC. Some very good stuff there. Many channels have web presence.
I believe that the quality of XM is pretty damn good ! I no longer have the tools or ears to test dynamic range, frequency response or THD but I am never ashamed to "crank it up" on a 400 watt Marantz system with Altec Voice of the Theatre speakers !
Best
TG
you can get your on a Viggen
The big kicker for me is the Electronic Music on XM radio is far superior. They have channels by some of my favorite djs and regular shows from Thump Radio & Biohazard from California that I just can't get on my Central Iowa radio. Not to mention some nice ambient sounds too on another channel. My buddy has it and we listen to it when we trek around the country to electronic music parties and such. It is great, will be getting one in the near future.
Life is everything but nothing.
I bought XM back in July and it ROCKS. There isn't any censorship, the channels that allow any kind of "bad" words are labled with a Xl and you CAN lock out channels you don't want the kid(s) to hear. XM comedy 150 is UNcensored and FUNNY AS HELL! ANYTHING goes there. I laugh my Ass off EVERY DAY. Carlin is on right now talking about state prison farms.
I love XM, hardly any commercials which is why I got it, I'm sick and tired of 22 minutes or more of commercials on normal am/fm radio. They can SHOVE AM/FM where the Sun don't shine.
XM rules!
I will take this into account, should I decide to subscribe either of these services. I'm an American who is sick of these populist protectionist rants; what's so evil about outsourcing? Now, it's one thing if U.S. jobs are outsourced to individuals in other countries who work in horrible conditions, but I'm sorry, Indian programmers, Bulgarian programmers, etc. are making decent wages and have good working decisions. How many of you who complain about tech jobs going overseas bemoan the fact that many of your clothes, computer components and other goods are made in other countries? Why should better-educated workers in India who live more simply be denied the oppertunity to answer tech support calls just because you feel that you have some sort of moral "right" to the job, just because you were born in the United States? But for many of you, these arguments will do nothing -- but this one might hit a little closer to home. In the end, trade, be it interstate or international, increases the standard of living both in the United States and in other countries. If all consumer goods were made in the United States, the average low-income American (of which I am one) would be unable to afford VCRs, Computers, a wide variety of clothes, and so on. If you like global stability, you might like to see countries like India not wallow in starvation like they did in the 1970s, but rather, to see a middle class develop there, a middle class that buys American exports. Economic populism is the cry of workers who demand too much money and have too few skills; free trade is the way of innovation, greater international stability and rising American lifestyles.
I've had XM since may of this year. I wouldn't go back to FM for nothing! about 80% of the time, I'm listening to XM46 Top Tracks. I've heard songs there that I haven't heard in years. Also XM40 Deep Tracks. I have NEVER heard on the radio the live version of Edgar Winters "Frankenstein", it was around 20 minutes long! Try that on FM....they can't do it. On FM, they have to interrupt the COMMERCIALS for a couple of minutes worth of MUSIC LOL
so, either way you end up supporting the same businesspeople. :)
When XM first started up, they rebroadcast several CC stations. This had some merit since it was a place for "new" subscribers to go to something they are used to hearing. They sounded bad, in most opinions, and they are now all gone as of November.
There is nothing currently restricting any content, and there will not be... that would be a free speach issue. What does is exist is an agreement that XM or Sirius will not use the local repeaters as "mini" stations and broadcast a local channel. The current broadcast monopolies don't want to compete any more than they have to - they paid billions in payment and millions in bribes in order to amass the thousands of stations they own. So they use NAB to hide behind. Its not just the CC and Viacom that are at issue here. Its the one station in a town does want anyone taking money that they see as theirs. (See low power FM for another great example).
The rules are by agreement - and are expected to be put into place permanently when the FCC gives the SDARs final approval on the repeaters.
You know, I've never subscribed to PB radio, but I did have PBTV once upon a time. It was nice. It served its purpose admirably. But there was one dark spot. They had this show called "Night Calls." I defy any man to get a hard-on watching that show. It is a call-in show. It features these two silly bitches giggling with each other. Then horny guys call in and ask them to do stuff to each other and they don't do any of it. It is the very worst adult television I've ever even heard of.
Every once in a while, I hear an ad promoting PB radio on XM. They are *proud* that it features "Night calls". I suspect that most of the content is that stupid show. Like the parent said, what else are they gonna do?
So, no. I thoroughly recommend XM (half of the music channels are commercial free, and the commercials on the other half are not enough to complain about), but I won't think twice about avoiding PB radio.
XM. About a year ago, I threw it into my truck. Bought a Sony head with the Sony XM box for under the seat. Got it all from Crutchfield, and took about an hour and a half to install. The look is appealing and the sound, terrific! The choices in stations is good (except I?d rather had Speed than NASCAR, but I?ll live). My company wanted me to go to Tempe. I live in Illinois, so I ask them if I could drive and they finally said yes. It was the greatest road trip in years. The channels were clear all the way there. I listened to as many different channels as possible. When I was stuck just east of the Oklahoma border due to significant snowfall (roads closed and all) I flipped on the comedy channel (adult version) and things seemed to be better. Then back to the weather channel to find out when it was stopping and when I?d be able to progress on my trip. All in all it was a great trip! When I arrived back home, I went straight to Best Buy and got my dad a Delphi unit for his Mazda. He drives a lot during the summer months and except for the lack of listening to the Cubs (he?s a fan) he also found the station choices to be superior to regular radio. I have had lots of friends end up with XM even after judging between the 2. Maybe the cost has played a role, but in most cases it was the Delphi?s ability to be portable. I finally got my third one and have a hook up to my stereo as well as my computer so I can stream/record when I want to. I have found that if I hear something I like, I can usually find it on a service like iTunes and download the single and burn that to a cd to increase my musical library. Other times I just listen to the stream again. With few exceptions, I have essentially given up on local radio. It just doesn?t fulfill my interest anymore. XM has fulfilled my every requirement, so far? To me, the choice is clear? you have a choice? Mine was XM!
I just got a job 4 hours from home and commute on the weekends. I hate (HATE) ads on radio and support public radio for that, but reception is the pits on the route and I was looking for a satellite solution. (I have better things to do with my time than burn CDs of stuff I've already heard...) I picked up a Sirius unit at Best Buy with a $100 rebate that made it free. Not too shabby. The antenna is a through-glass unit that has worked quite well. My only complaint is that the signal drops out in heavy weather (rain or snow). XM has the same problem according to the truckers. This has been rare though, so I would let it stop me for a remote home application. Bottom line: I love it! Weather Channel, NPR, CNN, blues, rock, new age. It's all good and commercial free. I also use the streaming every night when I get home, so that's a real beni. I don't watch TV (roomie does), so this is my media fix. The head (and stream) has given me some great leads on performers that I never knew, so that's all cool too. I don't get too excited about major appliances, but satellite radio has made this road warrior very happy. I used to live up on Lake Superior and would have loved this puppy compared to the two FM stations we had. Installed myself and worth every penny. Try out a few minutes of tunes for free. They sound great if you have speakers and a sub-woofer. http://www.sirius.com Gotta go,
I want the full range of BBC radio channels. If Sirius or XM offered that, I'd go out and buy a unit tomorrow.
I wrote to tell them so as well. If you agree, drop 'em a line, maybe it'll happen.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I've had both. I purchased a Sirius system last summer and then bought a Pontiac Vibe that came with XM. Here is my evaluation. I put the XM advantages first and the Sirius advantages last. Less talk on the XM channels. Sirius self promotes other channels. They claim to be commercial free, but the production quality of their promos is horrendous. Also, they cross promote streams nobody would ever listen to. ADVANTAGE XM XM is a few bucks cheaper. $12.95 vs. 9.95. ADVANTAGE XM XM has a wider variety of contemporary music channels. I'm 41, and I stick with the Smooth Jazz/Watercolors channel. You may disagree, but for me, NO ADVANTAGE. XM includes a few commercials on most of their music channels. It isn't that annoying, and you can easily change the station to something similar. Surprisingly, NO ADVANTAGE. Sirius includes intelligent talk while XM recycles television stations. Television is a visual medium "You're now looking at... does not work on radio. There is a multitude of good talk stations offered on Sirius. XM offers a poor selection of bad stations. ADVANTAGE SIRIUS Sirius offers NPR and PRI (Public Radio International) programming. While contractual reasons preclude them from offering Morning Edition and All Things Considered, the two excellent channels, NPR Now and NPR Talk, entertain me for the longest drives. ADVANTAGE SIRIUS After the holidays I plan of removing XM--I have a three month subscription that came with the car--and put in Sirius. I'm going to keep my old radio and antenna in case Sirius goes out of business. Mike Dowling www.mrdowling.com