Satellite radio

[Magneto]

Alright, so who has the low down on satellite radio? What is the best company? What is exactly required to listen in your car? How much is the subscription per month. I've got a commute and am interested in hooking myself up with some variety of stations. What do ya think?

 

[Stifler's Mom]

I have XM Satellite. Just under $10 per month and I love it.

I haven't been able to listen to Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dio, Metallica etc since I owned their tapes in the early and mid 80's.

www.xmradio.com

 

[Timebuilder]

I tried the Sirius system in a Camry rental from Hertz.

There is a lot of cross-promotion, where you might be listening to jazz, and hear about the rap channel, which is a little disturbing. Further, there are commericials. I'd expect to pay for commericial free satellite service, but I guess this is what we get for putting up with commericals on cable.

I don't know if I'd buy this service myself unless I had money just burning a hole in my pocket, and I didn't own an airplane.

 

[Diesel]

I've got XM in 3 car's, 1 house, and one boat. I absolutly love it. XM has gone completly comercial free which is nice. The comedy channel 150 is a riot. I even got one of my cheapest friends in the world to pony up for it. Now he loves it.

I have it playing right now as I write this. I would suggest the Delphi unit becuase then you only need one subscription and you can bring it with you anywhere. I have the boombox and also the home, and car kit too.

You can pre purcahse and save even more money on the subscription. XM unlike sirus is going to be around for a looooooong time.

Check out www.xm411.com for more info.

 

[Flying Illini]

My only experience with sat. radio was in a Sirius equipped crew car. It wasn't very intuitive at all. I don't know anything about XM but it has got to be better than Sirius.

BTW, when you sign up for XM, do you recieve a pass code or something similar so that only you can listen to the radio? How do they prevent someone from purchasing only the equipment and then listening to the radio?

 

[Timebuilder]

No commercials on XM? That almost makes it seem worthwhile!

 

[Magneto]

After researching a little more it looks like they give you a code and then you send the code to your receiver so that it enables it.

It looks like XM is the way to go. Another question though. If I want to add it to my exisiting radio, I'm supposed to listen to it through the tape deck adapter. Doesn't that degrade the sound quality? Does anyone have any experience with that?

 

[bigD]

Another question though. If I want to add it to my exisiting radio, I'm supposed to listen to it through the tape deck adapter. Doesn't that degrade the sound quality? Does anyone have any experience with that?

I've used these types of adapters in my old car to listen to a portable Discman through the stereo, and it does add noise.

Now that my new car only has a CD player, I had a guy install a set of RCA plugs as an input to my stereo. I use this setup with my MiniDisc player, and it sounds great - at least as good as the CD player itself. You might want to look into doing this - it's quite a bit better than using a tape adapter.

 

[goaliemn]

BTW, when you sign up for XM, do you recieve a pass code or something similar so that only you can listen to the radio? How do they prevent someone from purchasing only the equipment and then listening to the radio?

They send a turn-on code to the radio. If you don't pay, you get 5-6 free channels to listen to.

 

[Tripower455]

I have XM in my car and I love it. Great variety and sounds great.

If you are going to upgrade your head unit, then get one that is XM ready. This way, you get a better sound quality, and can control the XM reciever with the head unit, as opposed to having a separate control head (to fit/hide somewhere) to control It.

I have an Alpine setup (XM "ready" head unit and separate XM reciever) and it sounds as good as a CD. The receiver is mounted in the trunk area, separate from the HU, and plugs into it via an Alpine serial type cable. The HU controls the XM as an additional band on the radio. It's pretty slick, with all of the presets and my steering wheel controls control the whole thing. I even mounted the antenna (about the size and shape of a computer mouse) IN the spoiler on my car, to completely conceal the fact that there is something worth stealing in the car. So far, the tsA thieves in MCO have left my car alone....

If you want to use your existing head unit, most of the add on recievers use RF (on an unused FM freq) to transmit the signal to the head unit, so the sound quality is supposedly not as good (my friend has this setup, and if you ask me, it sounds fine). The downside to the add on units is that you have controller connected to the reciever that you have to find a place for. I am sure that there are some that use a line in, RCA type connection as well.

XM is commercial free on the musis stations only! The comedy (150) channel, which I listen to a lot, still has them (and it seems like a LOT more than before they went commercial free on the music stations) as do all of the news stations. Still XM is limited to 6 minutes of commercials an hour, which is MUCH better than the typical FM norm of 15 minutes per half hour during normal listening hours.

They send a turn-on code to the radio. If you don't pay, you get 5-6 free channels to listen to.

IIRC, you send them the number from your reciever, and then you leave it on for an hour or so, which activates it. The "free" ones rotate every day, so, one day you can get the boneyard, the next day, church music, the next day gangsta rap etc. FWIW, when I signed up after Xmas '02, it took a few days for my system to be activated, due to heavy volume.

I drive 3 hours each way to work every week, and I can say without ANY reservation, that XM is worth every penny I've put into it.

 

[Magneto]

Of those who have xm radio which receiver do you have, the roady or the skyfi?

 

[low-n-slow]

Magneto, I have the Ski-Fi and use it in my ag plane while I am working, I love it.

 

[Gulfstream 200]

XM in 1 car, the house, and the boat.

best thing to come around in ages!!!!

Id rather give up cable before XM.

I have the sky-fi and dont really like it. Its ugly orange and cant read it in the sun (boat). go for a real xm ready radio in-dash for your car if you have the bucks.

 

[side stick-n]

Bought my son the Delphi Roady for Christmas. He loves it and the XM radio. The roady came (well mail in) with a free home adapter kit which plugs right into an existing stereo input. He only has a CD player in his car (Saturn) so we purchased the FM modulator in lieu of the cassette adapter. The modulator transmits to an unused freq. (88.7 or close to it) which you have three to choose from. We mounted the modulator under the dash and it works GREAT! No car noise, no static, just CD quality continuous, no advertising music, talk, and comedy.