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XM going large

December 30th, 2005 · 1 Comment

Over at The Motley Fool, Rick Aristotle Munarriz writes about the expectations of XM Satellite Radio to kick off its presence at the Consumer Electronics Show with not only a big number as far as subscribers go, but some significant plans as far as video services go.

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1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Roger // Jan 1, 2006 at 7:10 am

    The person who posted about XM being better in wooded areas is correct. While it IS true that Sirius has a higher orbit, the signal is much weaker. I can get a reasonably strong XM signal inside my house, in a room with no south facing windows and I live in the woods with a poor view of the southern sky. With my sirius reciever, I could not get a consistant signal inside the house, even near a north facing window. I had to mount it outside, and even then, it fluxuaties(but does not drop). In short, Sirius drops out a LOT in wooded 2 lane roads.(though this can vary by time of day/satellite position)

    In the car, I get far more drop outs from Sirius. I’ve had sirius for about 6 months, and XM for only a couple weeks but driven a lot and have not had a drop out. I live in the middle of nowhere, a typical trip to the main highway will give me several drop outs. I have not had a single signal drop from XM. I’ve also had XM on rental cars on long road trips and only had drop outs on mountain roads where the south sky was blocked by the mountain, specifically, where the mountain was “blasted” to make room for the roadway.

    Now, I will say that I prefer the content on Sirius. I also think their DJ’s are better. I feel that XM sounds a little better. There is also less “lag” time in changing channels. I wish Sirius had affordable portable systems. The S50 is just too costly.
    For the XM radios we have, I do NOT like how you change the channels, I would just like to go up or down one channel. Out delphi units don’t allow for this option.

    So, there is no perfect system. But if you like Indie rock, Sirius Left of Center is better than XMU on XM. If you have little kids, Sirius Kids Stuff is great. XM Kids is aimed at preteens and leaves my under 5 kids in the dark. XM kids is a mirror of Disney Radio.