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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.
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.
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.
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
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!" ...
... 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.
There is the issue of signal strength. Each satellite provider is givena vertain power output to use for all their signals, and must split it up accordingly. Often times they will give pop and top 20 stations a greater broadcast strength and fringe channels or talk radio less strength. This, of course, effects quality of sound. XM users can witness this by tuning into 20 on 20 (channel 20) and LA Kiss (channel 21). You can notice LA Kiss is of a distinct lower quality than 20 on 20.
With that being said, I have heard more complaints from Sirius users that many of the channels suffer from poor quality due to this.
And just for a little extra food for thought, you corporate behemoth hating users (this is Slashdot, after all), Xm is owned by Clear Channel.
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!
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 $13/mo.
I got some of the first XM equipment from Pioneer, including a head unit, reciever and antenna. None of that FM modulator crap. I set it all up, activated the account, and i've been happy ever since.
All of the channels are great, depending on what you want to listen to. I never knew 10 different genres of rock existed until XM. Hell, Bluegrass has it's own channel. Some are commercial free, the others have WAY less commercials than regular AM/FM Radio.
Personally, I listen to Top 20, "Ethel" which is 90s alternative, CNN Headline News and the Comedy channel. The Comedy channel is COMPLETELY UNCENSORED. When I say anything goes, I *mean* it. pussy this, fuck that, shit on you, it never ends. It definitely makes the ride to work seem shorter.
Here I am two years later with the same equipment and the same subscription and I'm still paying for it. If you're tired of listening to CDs or AM/FM and just want something else to listen to, XM Radio is definitely the way to go. Car kits are so cheap now that you'd be foolish to pass it up.
My two cents.
-mgahs
5 years from now the only system in use could be [thisNewSystem], leaving you looking not just like a betamax weenie, but like a betamax weenie without any tapes...
Late 90's I was trying to buy a small(ish) portable DAB-radio (Digital Audio Broadcasting; not by satelite), but there just were none available on the market (and the "desktop"-models were too expensive to be worth it, IMHO).
Then I got myself one of those, at the time, brand new 20 GB iPods, and I never thought about (digital) radio again.
Currently I'm carrying around just under a week worth of music, comedy and, soon enough, even some books... listening to the music you like without paying a monthly fee (for music you can't even keep) sure beats radio.
Oh, I also do some time-shifting of netradio, so if I grow tired of those 10(ish) GB of music I've already got, there's always new content available to me.
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
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.
There's a ClearChannel rock station in Tampa that plays far too fucking much Metallica. They have "Mandatory Metallica" double song sets, and extra doses on "Metallica Monday" in case you haven't killed yourself by jamming a screwdriver into your ears repeatedly.
Hmmm, Metallica.... they sound familiar... weren't they the band that used to be good, turned to suck, and then became the anti MP3 posterboys? No shit, really?
Several times they've aired callers requesting old school Metallica to the point that the DJ (who sounds like he's always on pot) commented that "Yeah, nobody ever says 'hey play some of that crappy corporate new Metallica stuff.'"
The thing is, Metallica just wasn't all that popular on the radio until the posterboy flap happened. It almost seems like they've been getting their due.
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
Of course it is. What, you expect me to lay aside rational thought because of personal investment in the outcome? You probably want victims deciding punishment for criminals, instead of impartial judges, too.
The efficient worker is adaptable and retrains. He doesn't rely on protectionism to keep his job at the expense of the buying power of everyone else in his country.
Get off my launchpad!
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.
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.
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.
Hi, I did a two month cross-country trip in the summer of 2000, and you can see part of my unfinished journal . I guarantee you that you'll pick up tons local flavor just about anywhere you go, not just through radio but through cuisine, live music, scenery, and just talking to locals. Here are some tips, in case you or anybody else is interested.
Firstly, to have the best experience, avoid interstates as much as possible. Obviously if you need to get somewhere fast, the interstate is essential. But travelling on the US or state highways will bring you into contact with literally orders-of-magnitude more local culture.
I drove to the West coast (from Jersey) and about 95% of the drive westward was off the interstate. It was totally awesome. The scenery of smaller roads is usually way better. And you pass lots of farms and produce stands, find little country kitchens to get good homecooked food, small bars and honky-tonks to hang out in, etc. And in the smaller towns it's much easier to meet people and have a good chat in the small bars too. Before my trip I lived in NJ, Boston, and Philly, and found it far easier to talk to folks in bars outside the cities. I then drove back to the East Coast in a few days on the interstate, but that was because I had to be back in Baltimore for my graduate school starting date.
I'd also suggest trying to keep your trip as flexible as possible. Ie, make it up as you go. That way you can stay places you like, leave those you don't, etc. The more deadlines you place on yourself, the harder it is.
And finally, here's a tip I didn't find out until about halfway through my trip. You can sleep in national forests for free. I forget the details, but if you're something like 200 feet off the road, you can stay there for 2 weeks. Much much easier on the wallet that way than paying $5 to $15 for small campgrounds. Although it is kind of freaky being in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere at night by yourself. But also really cool too. And you can shower at truckstops, though these are usually found along the larger roads, for 2 or 3 bucks.
Let's see, to post something roughly on topic, there were parts of the trip where no radio is to be picked up for miles. Ie, in the deserts of the southwest and some parts of the deep South, etc. Satellite radio would be great for truckers and other folks driving through these ares, though I didn't have it. If you're driving alot, sometimes it's nice to hear a real human talking live, it gives some form of interaction, even if it's one way. I did pick up alot of tapes on my way from various truck stops.
The other thing is that you'll also find alot of Christian radio stations the further you are from big cities. If you're not religious, they can actually kind of interesting/amusing for short times, depending what they're doing. And always look for radio stations in the lower part of the spectrum, ie around 88, 89, and 90. This is where most of the college stations lie, and they definitely play the best sort of stuff of all genres.
Anyway, you'll have a great time. The most important thing to pick up the local culture try to avoid the interstate as much as possible. You'll find out that American culture (ie, Americana) truly does exist, and you can feel different flavors of it as you distinguish between New England, southern Appalachia (Dixie), Cajun Bayou country, the Great Plains and "Wild" West, the Southwest and Mojave, the West Coast, the Rockies, etc.
make world, not war
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?
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.)
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.
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 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
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,
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