Satellite Radio

[DisneyAddict62]

We flew Airtran for our Thanksgiving trip last week. The planes were equipped with satellite radio, which my DH thought was just great! I thought - what a good Christmas gift! So, my question is, which is better? XM or Sirrius? I don't know much about either!

Thanks!

[WDWfanatic742]

My car has Sirius and my Dad's car has XM. I personally like Sirius better because it has most of the sports on there including Football.

[Donald A]

A word of warning, we have XM and added it after factory. We play it through the FM modulator. We often have to switch stations as when we take long trips we get interference on certain stations. When the XM radio was actually a factory installed product it was much clearer without these problems. The only advantage with the Delphi SkyFi is we can use it in both cars as it is a portable unit. One subscription = lowest cost.

XM gets most baseball and Hockey games and I know that Sirius gets NFL games. However, you can follow the NFL on XM too. When traveling on Sundays we tune into Fox Sports Radio and they run through and constantly update all the ongoing games. Not quite as good as the actual game feed but you stay pretty up-to-date.

[jray21]

I have satellite radios in both of our cars and love them. Currently I like XM the best, but XM and Sirius are trying to get FCC approval to merger, so in a few months it probably won't matter which one you get. Right now on XM they have 5 christmas stations so it's really nice.

[DizneyRox]

SIrius fan here. It won't matter so much in a few months, however how they will enable programming on the different services is yet to be released.

XM and SIrius do not "talk" to each other in terms of radio to satellite communications. I have not seen anything on how they will get MLB on SIrius, nor how/if they will get Howard Stern on XM.

I would pick the service that fits you right now. I can't imagine that being XM, but whatever floats your boat. There are some awesome deals right now for Sirius, and last I heard, XM was giving stuff away.

[DisneyAddict62]

Anyone have the handheld units that he could use like and MP3 or in the car too? He likes to use his MP3 while he is out cutting the grass and such.

[DizneyRox]

Honestly, I can't recommend the handheld units, however, XM has better coverage than Sirius. I see this as one of the huge pluses to aquiring XM.

Satellite radio is a line of sight technology. You need to be able to physically "see" the satellite in order to get a signal. It's very different than FM. To get around this problem, the two different companies also use terrestrial repeaters. Those give the radios another signal to use in case they can't get line of sight. XM has many many more repeaters than Sirius.

Also, XM uses stationary satellites, while Sirius satellites move around the sky. It's somewhat of a pain as the satellites are in a different position in the sky on my way to work than they are on the way home. Reception is very different depending on which way I'm headed and what time of day it is.

I can see Sirius IMMEDIATELY taking advantage of the leases XM has os the towers with repeaters to get better coverage. There are plenty of birds in the sky, but they need to work on big cities and other difficult signal areas.

Still I prefer Sirius over XM just due to content.

[Ed]

Another Sirius fan here.

Their content is great, and I've had absolutely no problems with coverage.

Info on the Sirius/XM merger is available at
http://www.siriusmerger.com/

[DMApixie]

A word of warning, we have XM and added it after factory. We play it through the FM modulator. We often have to switch stations as when we take long trips we get interference on certain stations. When the XM radio was actually a factory installed product it was much clearer without these problems.

We had this problem with Sirius until DH installed an FM Direct Adapter. It was the best $30 he ever spent as we have never had FM interference again, and have not had to search for an 'empty' FM station to listen to the satellite radio.

Sidebar....anyone that has Sirius experience difficulties today? We were driving today and it just shut off and the display told us we had to subscribe. When we finally were able to get through to Sirius, they told us that they were updating their channels and a 'glitch' happened...they had no clue until the phone calls started pouring in. It was resolved though.

[Mackflava99]

My wife had XM in her car, i have Sirius- She wants to get hers changed-
Sirius has better coverage, more channels and less commercials.
I feel its a no brainer, but they are both gooe, its really what you will use-My kids listen to Disney channel - radio disney all day-

[Speedy1998]

XM fan here. 2 reasons I choose XM. At the time it was the only one that had a portable unit. And content. Personnally, I find some of the stations on Sirius offensive, and I did not want my subscription paying for that kind of content.

The portable unit works best when it is in it's car adapter, or the home base unit that came with it. However, if I use it outside where nothing is blocking the sky (like a building) it works good with it's built in antenna.