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XM Portable Satellite Radio Receiver with Hard Drive
daveplot writes "XM announced today the new XM MyFi. The hand-held MyFi gives users the personal freedom to enjoy XM Radio's Ultimate PlayList of more than 130 digital XM channels in two ways: a 'live' listening mode and a time-shifting "memory" mode. The MyFi's live mode enables users to listen live to all of XM's 68 commercial-free music channels, plus premier news, sports, talk, traffic and weather channels. MyFi's memory mode -- called 'My XM' -- allows users to store five hours or more of XM's outstanding content with the press of a button, even when the unit is not in use. The MyFi makes it possible to enjoy XM Satellite Radio anywhere, anytime, effortlessly. More information is at XM411.com." We had a story mentioning this a few days ago.
XM Radio has every reason to push MyFi, in its press release, it mentioned "MyFi is a revolutionary product that dramatically expands XM Radio's appeal and potential subscriber base". The easier it is to listen to their contents, the more subscribers they will get.
$349.99 is a bit pricey, but with enough advertisements/sponsors etc, they might even be able give it away for free??
I wonder if any other company is going come out with a competiting product (like TiVo vs MythTV)? Might be another lawsuit in the making. And how about time-shifting local radio station? There are times when you want to skip some ads, or probably pre-record some live converstion before you head into a no-reception area.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
This article 404'd on me initially. Now it seems to work, finally.
Ahh, if only one of the new iPods and this XM device were one and the same. :-)
Was this bad timing on Apple or XM's part, or intentional? Surely there'd be reduced press coverage on the XM device with the new iPods being launched...
Either XM or Sirius should team up with apple to launch an Ipod with satellite radio. I bet that would help sell satellite radio subscriptions.
Man, I have to think that the most ridiculous thing is selling a hard-drive based music player without any way to put on mp3/AAC/etc.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Dear Slashdot,
My company is releasing a product. We would like a organize a grassroots advertising programs. Our marketing team has created a number of press releasing. Would your site please post our adverstising for free?
Oh Ick. Just what we need - more ads on a pay service.
I can't imagine the technology is that far off to stream video content to one of these things via satellite. I suppose the big hold up will be getting all the rights sorted out...
-Chris
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
I really hope Sirius comes out with one of these before the end of 2005. Howard Stern I need. The NFL I do not.
And it would be nice if it were closer to $200.
*cough*RIPOFF*Cough*
Sure the name of the Neuros MyFi means something else, but sheesh it doesn't take by one google search.
Hell for 399 bucks you could get a neuros that will (finally) do timed recording with a 40gb hd and all the niceness of having linux in your.... backpack. The thing is freakin huge but XM didn't even bother to be original in the naming of their Ipod wannabe.
Give me lots of channels, time shifting, and the ability to buy (preferrably unencumbered) tracks out-of-band (i.e., I can browse for tracks, not just wait for them to be played) and I will sign up. This service is so almost there.
who's going to be the first to remedy this!
How do they expect anyone to buy this with the lack of details on this site?
I want to know if you can save individual songs or if you have to record things in time blocks. Anyone know what format these songs are stored in?
Isn't 'time shifting' the whole reason that the PC USB XM Adapter was discontinued?!?
WTF?
What format does the device store the music in? Is there anyway to get music on or off? Since its satellite and all of those new XM equipped cares come with antennea on the roof, what kind of reception should we epect to get sitting in our cubes at work? I thought XM required line of sight. Am I mistaken?
Groups like ASCAP send representatives around to stores and restaurants today and check out the music they have playing. If they determine that it's coming from a non-broadcast-radio source, they demand vigorish from the store owner. The case I remember (vaguely) found that a restaurant could play live broadcast radio or TV for the enjoyment of its patrons. But they could not tape a radio or TV show and then play the tape at a later time without paying the licensors.
Anyway, the whole reason I bring up the licensing thing is that these groups have already shown their opposition to "useful" recordings of their programming. If MyFi can indeed become "ReplayRadio", you can bet that the audio won't be digitally handed out to you the subscriber. The best you'll be able to hope for is to grab the analog signal somewhere and redigitize it yourself (along with all the crappy artifacts that reencoding brings.) They'll make it as easy as possible to use from their user interface, but as difficult as possible to intercept on the way to the speakers.
John
Seriously, time shifting is much more usefull if you have talk radio. IIRC sirius has NPR and Howard, I don't think XM had alot of talk.
Time shifting just means you can skip the songs you don't like..
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/xm-myfi-by-delphi- 024234.php
I believe that the people at neurosaudio might take issue with that "MyFi" name, since it is their trademark according to their fact sheet.
Read about the feature here
Wort Wort Wort!
$350 + XM subscription, going to be a little bit harder to sell this product. Sure XM is a great service, but I couldn't see getting one of these, unless I can tap into my dads service.
Compare that to my SkyFi radio, which was $99. Add the home kit for $70, and the car kit for $70 and you're at $240. If you want to be able to listen anywhere, you need the boombox which is $99. So now we're at $340. Now if you include the fact that this new one can be used anywhere (and doesn't need a big boombox full of D batteries) and time shifts, that's a great deal.
$10 (or so) to make it portable and add timeshifting. Sounds fine.
Now if you want to argue that ALL XM radios are overpriced, that's a different argument. But compared to one of their current offerings, this is a good deal.
Unless you ONLY want to listen to it in the car ever. But if you've had XM for a while, you'll want to start being able to listen to it at home too, and maybe out doing yard work, and...
My one comment is, I'm a little worried about the timeshifting. I hope it doesn't try to do that while on batteries, because I would think that would eat them up if it recorded much stuff. Hopefully only when in a crade (the car, at home, etc.).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Couldn't they make this thing look a little "cooler"? I mean, with the onslaught of portable media devices and the thousands of man hours spent trying to make the aesthetics on these devices as appealing as possible, why are Delphi's products waning in this area?
Well, it is kinda playing good quality sound stream...
What about DRM?
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
The MyFi's live mode enables users to listen live to all of XM's 68 commercial-free music channels, plus premier news, sports, talk, traffic and weather channels.
Wow... what a way to work in the number of channels, etc. into the schpiel.
What else did you expect? That MyFi would not allow some channels to be heard??
I'd been researching like crazy to see if there is a way to get XM service for free. I don't think there is anyway in hell possible. Any slashdotter is welcome to prove me wrong!
It seems like they'd be able to squeeze a lot more audio than five hours worth onto a device equipt with a hard drive.
What's going on here?
Hacked in 3...2...1... Streamripper anyone?
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Nothing in the articles says it does, and the 5 hour capacity that they gave in the article, could be done with as little as 256 MB (probably 512 MB - don't know what XM's average bitrate is). I think that was just a faulty assumption on the editor's part. So you could only hold five or six albums, which you would likely want to switch out often. IMHO, that isn't worth the hassle when you have all the XM stations to listen to, and it would increas the complexity, support issues, and (to a lesser extent) the overall cost. If they did give it enough space to hold an entire music collection, then it would be far too expensive. So I can see why they left that capability out.
Let's see....
Portable device able to record audio produced from radiowaves. The radio waves are being transmitted from a large distance.
Hmmm...
I think sony had a recordable walkman from the early 80's. And moving forward, some of the small MP3 players have the ability to record radio.
Nothing to see here.... Just another balloon that needs to be popped.
If you are looking at getting either services, here are a few lessons I learned over the last year and a half....
(i) XM seems to be going for the "deep playlist" crowd whilst Sirius is going for the "I would like to hear my favorite song many times a day" crowd. both approaches are valid. Depends if you are the type of person who likes pounding hits all day or, if you are the type of person who likes to listen to the "B" sides of records.
(ii) XM's pricing approach is to have a cheap base price $9.99 but charge for services after that ( premium channels, online streaming is extra ), etc. Sirius has plans for premium channels, but have so far resisted the effort, they trying to have a hefty base package. I use streaming, but I would like for it to be optional, since I may what to go with yahoo launch ( once they start supporting Mozilla ) or real radiocast.
(iii) Do not depend on the FM transmitter. Those things produce horrible sound. If you live in a city, forget it; you're going to be dodging stations on even short commutes.
(iv) They both have less than CD quality sound and expect it to get worse as they try to cram more and more obscure stations in very limited bandwidth.
(v) Do check xmfan.com and siriusbackstage.com to find the problems current users are having.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
That's it? It has a hard drive with 5 hours on it? Lets see here. MP3 encoding at ~1meg/minute. No that can't be right. Lets go WAV, 10 meg/minute so 5*60=300 so its 3000 megs. A 3 gig hard drive and its $349. WTF? This thing should be able to time shift hundreds of hours at that price. And if tivo can sell a 40 gig hard drive in their unit...and its $99. XM is not going to sell these things as well as they think.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
I'm old enough to remember the beginning of Cable TV and the promises they made. They promised a crystal clear picture (mostly fulfilled) and commercial-free TV except for local channels carried.
Well now everything, including the premium movie channels are carrying commercials. Kinda pisses me off because when cable started to catch on, they cut back on the signal strength of local air stations practically forcing the watcher to buy cable TV. Some people think I'm imagining things that local TV over the air was always bad. I tell them to compare that with their local ethnic TV station... out here local spanish TV comes in clear as a bell. They didn't cut back signal strength.
So if satelite radio catches on, the same will happen to the local radio stations. I mourn already...
...why have the marketdroids and geeks started using this term so heavily. It's just a freakin' delay. You can't time-shift shit from the future back to now. Only if you can do that should it be called time-shifting.
My experience with XM radio in a building or home with a metal roof = 100% signal loss.
The poster is the owner of xmxpert.com and owns stock in both XM and Sirius:
"I opened a Scottrade account last week and purchased $450 worth of XM Stock and $50 of Sirius stock. I'm going to stay in it for the long haul, even though it has gone down every day, but it will go back up. It's all gone down $56.90 so far."
His blog can be found here http://www.davidplotts.com/mt/
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Agreed. Isn't the whole point of switching to satelitte radio is to lose the god damn ads?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Well, it ain't free but you can get one really cheap -- there's this device that offers constant free music and talk streams all the time, and you can rip any stream you want by connecting another device. Most of the free music is paid for by advertising. It's pretty cool if you like advertising; they call it a "radio."
$349.99 is a bit pricey, but with enough advertisements/sponsors etc, they might even be able give it away for free??
Yeah... and they could call it MyFM.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I'm not saying that such a service would be impossible, but it would be a very big step from what they're doing now.
I am pretty sure that anything that is a "public performance" requires ASCAP fees ... even if it is playing the radio. I was surprised when I found this fact out as one has to wonder how many times the ASCAP thinks it should be paid for one perfomance.
Dear Lawyer,
We forgot to tell you that we're going to use a product name that another company has already registered. How much will it take to settle this?
Respectfully yours,
XM
Word Mark MYFI
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: PLAYERS AND RECORDERS OF DIGITAL AUDIO EMBODIED IN ELECTRONIC FILE FORMAT; RADIOS; AND COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR CREATING, MANAGING, PLAYING, AND RECORDING DIGITAL AUDIO. FIRST USE: 20021115. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20021115
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 76448417
Filing Date September 10, 2002
Current Filing Basis 1B
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition December 23, 2003
Owner (APPLICANT) NEUROS AUDIO, L.L.C. LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY ILLINOIS 2 NORTH RIVERSIDE PLAZA, SUITE 200 CHICAGO ILLINOIS 60606
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED
Attorney of Record Andrew J. Gray IV
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
Anybody else a little worried to have my cell phone next to my right nut and my MyFi next to the left one?
Well damn, I hope Sirius gets something like this soon. I chose Sirius some time ago because *all* it's music channels are commercial free, and I can listen to the music streams over the web.
*TheDarb
This sig intentionally left blank.
Why buy the tracks from the device? Would you type in a credit card number? Use an account that could be abused? It would never work.
However, getting the thing to attach to a computer through iTunes might...
i wonder if XM's competitor Sirius Radio is going to be doing something similiar.
i believe that it would be much better for buisness
meh, i want howard, timeshifted, so i don't have to wake up at
6am daily to listen to him rant about the fcc and the "big government"!
the new saying in two-oh-oh-four, i want my howard stern!, screw MTV!
I pay $9.99/month for the service and I pay another $3.99/month to login and listen over a computer (that was for my 14 year old son).
Sirius is $2 cheaper per month if you want the radio and the online listening. However, XM has some stuff that I want that Sirius does not have, so, it depends on what you want.
The prices for the radios and homekits/car kits/boombox, etc. are all over the map. Before buying I would search the bargain sites such as fatwallet, anandtech, etc.
http://www.busyweather.com/
What is the FAA/FCC ruling about using one of these receivers on an plane? I assume it is only good for domestic flights but it sure would beat the selection offered by the current in flight music providers.
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
Sat radio is bad technology at a very bad price. Wake up people.
Speak truth to power.
You would imagine that for $349 they would at least put an FM radio in there, for the not-so-uncommon cases where you're too far away from a repeater and you don't have unobstructed line-of-sight to the satellite -- or for when you want content that is just not available on XM, such as Howard Stern or NPR.
As a matter of fact, this is what the ASCAP site's FAQ has to say about general licenses:
Frequently Asked Questions About General Licensing
ASCAP LICENSING OF BUSINESSES
(Nightclubs, Concerts, Hotels, Businesses, etc.)
1. I'm interested in playing music in my restaurant or other business. I know that I need permission for live performances. Do I need permission if I am using only CD's, records, tapes, radio or TV?
Yes, you will need permission to play records or tapes in your establishment. Permission for radio and television transmissions in your business is not needed if the performance is by means of public communication of TV or radio transmissions by eating, drinking, retail or certain other establishments of a certain size which use a limited number of speakers or TVs, and if the reception is not further transmitted (for example, from one room to another) from the place in which it is received, and there is no admission charge. Your local ASCAP licensing manager can discuss your needs and advise how ASCAP can help you.
John
Wrong use of good technology. I own two TiVo's, I subscribe to Sirius, and I'm eagerly awaiting the day that I can hit quick rewind on my radio (since I keep trying to do it by accident ANYWAY).
But since 99% of the stuff I listen to on the radio is talk anyway (I have an ipod for music), the only reason I would ever time-shift something would be to avoid commercials, that's impossible to do. There isn't a visual clue that the commercials are over. The only way that could be possible would be if the device somehow knew commercials were over - and, well, we've been down that road before with television, haven't we....
I do want a hard drive on my Sirius. But only a small one, so I can rewind back a few seconds, as I mentioned above, for those moments when I wonder - hey, what did they just say? Time-shifting just doesn't make sense to me.
Don't Forget me
And to think the radio shark was hot shit not even a month ago.
That's a really uninspired name. XMan woulda been soooo much better. XMan: The walkman for superheroes...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
I know I've been spoiled by the ipods interface, but I'm looking at this thing and it appears to have 12 (!) buttons, five of which are two option buttons, and a little selection pad. Is this really necessary? Maybe people have patented having fewer than 12 buttons...
Pro or Con, which product gives the most bang for the buck?