Picked up Sirius last Wednesday and I like it... good selection and good reception. (They just need a cajun-zydeco station) I went with Sirius because their satellites are not geostationary. Since they fly over, they have a more direct angle. XM has satellites fixed over the US, but they have to be closer to the equator and thus come in on a shallower angle. Living in the mountains of NM, Sirius made sense. We went to Taos for Sunday lunch and had good signal through canyons and mountains... major improvement over local FM... and no commercials.
Let us know what you think after a month. I am interested in knowing how fresh they keep their playlists. I checked out the music stations on DirecTv and found that they rarely changed the playlist
Yea eventhough Sirius is more in Subscription $$, there are no commercials. XM has commercials and thus ad revenue $, so it can offer less per month.
does Sirius offer that portable stereo boombox feature that XM does? I'd want to use it in my house too..
The factory radio on Jeeps is impressive enough. Have you ever wondered the artist and/or name of a song while driving? The factory radio scrolls station name, artist, and song name for some radio stations and station name for most radio stations.
Both XM and Sirius offer home units. XM just released a rack component XM/FM/AM stereo for audio systems. Also, to the person who posted about the location of XM satelites and reception in New Mexico, it's not an issue because XM has terrestrial translators throughout the U.S. Sirius may be commercial-free but XM offers a better variety of programming. If Sirius' money troubles continue, Infinity (CBS) could purchase the company and add their syndicated programs (Howard Stern, Leykis, etc.) to counter Clear Channel's programs on XM.
Sirius doesn't have a money issue. They have 479M in cash, and they issued another stock issuance for additional cash. The problem they have is that - their product is 1 year behind XMSR. XMSR had a jump on subscribers for an additional year. The CEO of Sirius admitted their product is kind of outdated, and they would have to re-do some stuff to catch up. However he did say that their boombox would be out by Christmas to compete with XMSR. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=SIRI
It's not an issue if you're a city dweller. It is an issue in the boonies. I guarantee there's not enough tt's to bring in the reception when you're driving across radio-free Nevada.
I just bought a new car about a month ago and it came with 3 free months of XM Radio. Before listening to it, I never would've thought of getting XM Radio, but after having listened to it this long, I'm thinking about forking over the $10/month for it. The comedy, dance, 80's, urban, and jazz stations are pretty sweet. It's better than listening to the cackling of commercials and car ads on regular radio.
