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Howard Stern Coming To the Net
theodp writes, "To promote an Internet radio service Sirius is launching this week, Howard Stern's 4+ hour program will be made available live online for free on October 25 and 26. The new Sirius service will offer 75+ channels of CD-quality programming for $12.95/month with no need to buy a Sirius satellite receiver."
While I could honestly care less about Howard Stern, I am interested in this Internet streaming service of theirs. Does it have support for mobile clients, like PalmOS 5 and Windows Mobile 5?
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I have Sirius in my car as well as a home kit for use with my home stereo. I travel fairly often all over Western Canada so having satellite radio is sort of a must as I don't like to take scads of CDs with me. Sirus fits the bill perfectly and I have access to programs that I wouldn't normally on terrestrial radio, like Fox and CNN radio as well as the World Radio Network.
Now, satellite radio in the car is one thing, but PAYING for the same content strictly for use in the home makes no sense. If you have the Internet you already have access to free, high quality radio stations playing a wide variety of music, never mind that all the cable and satellite companies include commercial free music stations as part of their basic digital service.
I understand the need for Sirius to broaden their income base as they have yet to make money, but even the most novice Internet user is aware of free alternatives that offer essentially the same or better content.
CDDA is a very inefficient encoding. You could easily exceed CD quality with one quarter the bitrate using lossy compression if you started with a better-than-CD source. Is that what Howard Stern is planning to do? Almost certainly not. Does it even matter for his show? Absolutely not.
You know, I'm getting deadly tired of people bragging about they mp3 compression kung-fu knowledge.
YES, WE REALIZE IT'S COMPRESSED.
Geez.. and yea, it's CD quality to the casual listener and in fact just THAT is what it's supposed to mean. If you wanna see how much people care about marginal improvements in quality, see where DVD-Audio went, and you can witness where HD DVD and Blue Ray will go (hint: nowhere... I know, I know).
People whining about professionally encoded (encoder matters a lot) mp3 streams of 128kbps and more having terrible quality really amaze me. It'd a damn radio after all. It's not like you recover critical encrypted messages hidden in the audio and you need 1:1 correspondence of each sample, or your kidnapped wife is dead in 24 hours.
In a nutshell, you can take your mp3 l33t skills and your 64-bit audio 256kHz 15+1 surround system and shove it up your audio output socket.
I listen to Howard Stern all the time, commuting on route 128. All I do is tune my FM radio to 87.9.
Apparently many Sirius satellite radio receivers must be add-on units that work through FM modulators with the car's FM radio. And 87.9 is apparently the default FM conversion setting.
Based on my unscientific poll, during drive time something like 2/3 of Boston-area Sirius subscribers are tuned to Stern.
OK, to tell the truth, no, I don't get continuous, uninterrupted Stern that way, but, yes, I do keep one of my presets at 87.9 and I do check from time to time to see if anything is on there... and I get enough Stern to feel like I'm still "in touch" with him and his gang.
So, the question I have is, which is it? are jackbooted Sirius thugs going to sue me for theft of services? Or are jackbooted FCC thugs going to toss the converter operators in jail for operating pirate radio stations?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!