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Author Topic: Satellite Radio - anyone try it? John Walsh Film God Posts: 2490 From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way Registered: Oct 1999 posted 06-28-2003 11:00 PM                     I guess it costs about $10 a month. There seems to be only two companies; "XM" and Sirius. For your car, it seems like you have to mount a special antenna.. which I dislike since you usually have to make a hole. I hate regular FM radio around here so much, I drive in silence. It's all violent rap or shock-jock shit. So I thought I'd give satellite radio a try.  |  IP: Logged Kyle Watkins Expert Film Handler Posts: 185 From: Stuart, FL, USA Registered: Sep 2001 posted 06-28-2003 11:15 PM                     I no a few peole with it. they all love it. alway some thing to listin too. they even have a few chanels of peole that have not made it "big" just starting out. you always have something to listin too. once i get my new car here in a few weeks i puting it in. as with the antenna they have ones so u dont have to make a hole. Kyle  |  IP: Logged Josh Jones Redhat Posts: 1207 From: Plano, TX Registered: Apr 2000 posted 06-29-2003 01:16 AM                        If you are an audiophile, I imagine this is not the system for you. The sound quality I have heard I was not impressed with, highly compressed. But I guess that is the price you have to pay for so many choices. Funny, I find myself saying that about a lot of things lately..... Josh  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-29-2003 01:20 AM                        I have it, and I also sell it at my day job. (We sell XM.) If you have a lot of radio stations where you live, I could see where you could probably be happy without satellite radio, but out here in the sticks it's a godsend. Very few commercials -- in fact most of the best stations are commercial free. (Sirius is completely commercial free, but costs $3 more per month.) As to the antennas -- they are getting smaller. The newest one we have is only about the size of a medium sized cookie. They are magnetic - there is no need for a hole in the car roof. The two best things about it are, 1. Since the stations are not "programmed" by Madison Avenue or some huge conglomerate, the jocks are free to play just about anything they want within their format. As a result, you'll hear music you haven't heard in years and never expected to hear on the radio....even occasional stuff that's never been released on CD. 2. You will develop at least half a dozen or more "favorite" stations, so you can ALWAYS find something you want to hear. Add to this the fact you can email your favorite stations' program director, AND THEY WILL WRITE BACK and listen to your suggestions. I tell ya, it's righteous.  |  IP: Logged Nate Lehrke Master Film Handler Posts: 396 From: Denver, CO Registered: Oct 2002 posted 06-29-2003 01:31 AM                     When I did have a car, I had it & loved it. I used XM and paid the $9.95 a month. I used mainly because I love stand up comedy and they had four sations to choose from. Ten bucks a month isn't a whole lot for something always good to listen to. They did have to drill a hole in the top of my truck, but the Best Buy guys did a great job with the whole installation!  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-29-2003 02:24 PM                        I, too, would be interested in hearing about others' experiences with satellite radio. I would be happy to pay the $10/month or so if there really is a wide variety of programming, if there are few commercials, and if the sound quality is good enough to be listenable, at least in the car. If it sounds like 128k MP3 files, though, I'll pass. Hopefully they at least allocate more bandwidth to the music stations than to the talk stations and don't compress everything to hell like most commercial FM stations, all of which are trying to be the loudest station on the dial. Commercial radio is sucking more and more by the minute and some recent FCC decisions are likely to cause it to suck even more in the forseeable future. Thank you, Clear Channel...  |  IP: Logged Paul G. Thompson The Weenie Man Posts: 4718 From: Mount Vernon WA USA Registered: Nov 2000 posted 06-29-2003 04:56 PM                     I'll tell you what....We have our feed of country formats and rock-and-roll formats which orginate in Texas via ABC. It comes in on GE-8, with the Starguide III receivers. Works nice. Except for one small minor insignificant detail. Sunspots kick us off the air. For home entertainment, you can expect the same thing. Scott, you are right. Radio sucks. Many radio stations know that the "talk format" is really taking hold. When Josh and I was with Brad earlier this month, we listened to a "talk format" and it was hilarious! The broadcasting industry found that if they want to keep their ratings up, the solution is to put more assholes on the air.  |  IP: Logged Josh Jones Redhat Posts: 1207 From: Plano, TX Registered: Apr 2000 posted 06-29-2003 05:51 PM                        "Is there a way out? Yes, piracy, radio piracy..." An intersting quote I once found in a book. Josh  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 06-30-2003 12:37 AM                        Radio signals are free. Hard to pirate them. Unless you can make them even more free. That would rock. For every 10 minutes I listen to the radio, $100 is added to my bank account.  |  IP: Logged Mike Olpin Chop Chop! Posts: 1852 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Jan 2002 posted 06-30-2003 12:41 AM                     XM satalite radio is beamed to cars through two satalites, "Rock" and "Roll". Together they cover the USA and parts of Canada with a 70 megawatt signal. In urban areas, where high-rise buildings block the signal, XM ground repeaters are used. They only operate thier 100 chanel network on 12.5MHz, so they only have 125kHz of bandwidth for each channel. they have not made public the information about what compression they use to fit music into this small a pipeline. (interesting to note that every XM reciever has a chip for EPAC decoding ) As for voice, it is known that they use the AMBE algorithm for talk channels. By my listening tests, XM sounds a lot better than FM, an impressive feat since most Fm stations have 75% more bandwidth. However, it's nowhere near cd quality as XM advertise it to be. [ 06-30-2003, 02:10 AM: Message edited by: Mike Olpin ]  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 06-30-2003 09:42 AM                    I have XM and enjoy it a lot. I'm a Fox News junkie, and it's nice to be able to listen to my favorite shows in the car while I drive. It's true that the audio is compressed A LOT and the sound quality is bad if you listen carefully. Kinda sounds like a low bit rate MP3. For the most part, it seems "good enough" for what I use it for - in the car, and around the house. The Special X channel is cool. I've heard probably a hundred songs on that channel, and the only one I was familiar with is Day-O. Then you have the Comedy channels, and the old time radio channels, Nascar, etc. Lots of stuff to listen to. If you spend a lot of time in the car, and are tired of over the air radio, I recommend it highly. It's very entertaining.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-30-2003 02:54 PM                        quote: However, it's nowhere near cd quality as XM advertise it to be. Actually they say it's "remarkably close to CD quality" in the latest brochure. It says here they use "aacPlus audio encoding by Coding Technologies, and Neural Audio optimization." XM and Sirius' major target market is drivers. I would bet that 90% or more of drivers wouldn't be able to tell the difference between XM and CD, given the quality of 99.9% of car audio systems combined with road noise.  |  IP: Logged William Leland III Master Film Handler Posts: 336 From: Charleston, SC, Registered: Aug 2002 posted 06-30-2003 03:41 PM                        I remember we had the snipes for "Radio XM" a few years ago, never saw or head anything about Radio XM after they ran their run. Mike, What kind of display unit do you have to intall in your car. how big is it and is it bolted or glued to the dash? thanks. Scott, my friend is a country radio dj and she worked for Clear Channel, no longer she quit. The stories she told me about them would explained why they suck.  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 06-30-2003 04:14 PM                        I do not know about Alaska but Hawaii has pretty much everything the original 48 states have except satellite radio. Because of the way a satellie is set up, Hawaii is out of the range to receive a signal from the orbiter. This was the same problem with satellite direct TV. Now that another satellite in a better position in orbit, local subscribers can finally buy the dish system and watch TV programming. The same thing will happen if satellite radio becomes popular. I wish I had it in my car now because our only local classical music station in Honolulu do not play the kind of music I enjoy. The music in the morning always seem to be devoted to modern music when I am more partial to music from the Renaissance up to the Romantic period. Yes, I do enjoy Copeland, Mahler Stravinsky, Shostakovich and others but I prefer Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel and music that preceded them and I think satellite radio will give me that choice if the service was available here. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 06-30-2003 06:11 PM                     Sirius is clearly the underdog on the digital satellite radio service market with XM attracting more subscribers. However, if I were to buy XM or Sirius I would strongly consider the latter. One of my female friends had a Sirius setup installed in her Honda Accord Special Edition. I forget the brand of receiver (I think it might have been a Panasonic) but the thing was pretty slick. One plus over XM, you don't have to get holes drilled in your vehicle. Her little domed satellite receiver thingie has an adhesive back and the wiring coming from it has a protective covering (the wires run into the trunk through the seam separating the trunk panel from the rear window). Overall it looked like a neat installation. OTOH, I have seen XM installations with a regular looking antennae and exposed wire. That's kind of ghetto looking and an invitation to vandals. I agree with Josh Jones on the audio quality. Both XM and Sirius leave a bit to be desired on the quality end. A lot of it seems brassy, metallic, thin and somewhat harsh. Sure, you can get some decent bottom end response on the music, perhaps better than FM radio. However, different frequenc sub bands feel cancelled out, which makes the character of the audio less "full" sounding than a good FM broadcast. The main "plus" about these services is the variety, uncensored content, commercial free programming and the really really nice thing of having the receiver spell out the artist and title of the freaking song. I hate radio discjockies that yammer on about useless crap and then don't say the name of the new tune they just played. One thing to keep in mind between FM broadcasts and the satellite services, many FM stations now use computerized servers to play back much of their programming. So, in many cases, you're still listening to data compressed audio. On the upside, most of these systems don't compress the original LPCM audio track any more than 4:1 (making that a little higher in bandwidth than a 2.0 channel MP3 encoding at 320kb/s).  |  IP: Logged

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