XM Satellite Radio - Hows it?

my dad's got it in his malibu. it's an incredibly awesome thing to have, especially if you do a lot of driving (especially long road trips, won't have to keep finding radio stations) however, i've found myself only listening to a few of the stations out of the 100+ offered, however, i'm sure it's the same for pretty much everyone. the only downside really is that you lose service everytime you go through a long tunnel, and we kept losing it in downtown chicago, real tall buildings will block the satellite as well.

 

XM came on my 06 Avalanche. I love it so much I put the antenna under the seat. I let it expire and they turned it back on within 5 min. as I drove.

 

I also think it is the ticket. I hardly use the cd player or regular radio anymore. I used to wear out the cd players cause I hate all the crap on the radio. I have 2 homes and listen to the same stations at both places. You can drive across country and listen to the same station.

 

I have it in 3 cars and in my office. One problem; commercials. A few of the more popular channels have them now and it is worse than the radio. Not only are they frequent but they are the same commercial(s) over and over. It can be worse than having to hear Josh Groban 193,845,854,921 times a day on a local station.

 

I've had XM and Sirius in different vehicles. I enjoy both of them, but like Scott said I found myself listening to a handful of channels and ignoring the rest on each. Personally, I like Sirius more but either one is a fair price to pay if you spend much time in a car.

 

I've had XM in my Camry for about 3 1/2 years. It's great for long trips and I listen to it around town as well. Like everybody else, I just listen to a few of the channels. My favorites: Real Jazz, High Standards, and Fine Tuning. There are no commercials on the music channels, and I don't listen to the talk, so that's not a problem for me.

When I upgraded the receiver in my car a couple of years ago, I got a docking station and hooked the old one up to the home theatre system. It sounds surprisingly good and provides hours of commercial-free radio.

The thing I like best is that I hear music that I really like and never would have known about otherwise. It has led me to buy many CDs and music downloads. For long trips, I ended up getting a digital voice recorder so that I could take note of the things I heard and wanted to have in my collection.

 

Now if sat radio just had a TIVO like drive that would store selections you like.

 

I had XM for a while, but after I got a head unit that took SD cards, I just stopped listening to it. One warning, it was a pain in the ass to get them to cancel it. They would 'accidentally' hang up on me during the cancel process, direct me to incorrect extensions, direct me to continuously ringing extensions, and then harass me over and over with '1/2 price offer' type pitches. It finally took about 2 hours and threatening somebody with personal legal action to get them to cancel it. I also have a buddy who they just started billing after the free three month trial, even though he said he didn't want to continue.

 

I have XM, I like XM for O&A, ron and fez, Cigar Dave, Fox News. I like Sirius for music. Sirius seems to have less commercials and stations I like better.

I've only played with Sirius in other peoples cars so I don't know whats on it as much as I do XM.

 

I like Sirius much more...

 

Satellite radio is great. I've have both XM and Sirius and am pleased with both. XM seems to have more commericals and they are repetitive as mentioned above..

 

yeah, I agree, and yes, Sirius is the better choice for me anyway even though XM sponsored one of my cars :/

 

Got XM and love.

XM has all the baseball games. I enjoy listening to baseball. I watch NFL football (Sirius) and it's only on Sunday and Monday while baseball is on just about every day.

The music is fine. No commercials on the stations I listen to.

If you are behind buildings or under trees you will lose your signal.

We have a portable unit that we take on the boat and in the car. Love it. Works fantastic in the mountains where you lose an FM station in 5 or 10 miles. Satellite...no problem, except in tunnels.

 

thought you were supposed to be able to store 20 favorites. I've never tried it. Let me know how to do it.

You know they are talking about a merger in a year, right?

 

Some of the newer XM units will let you record music or shows. I'm pretty sure you can program it. It will record shows based on the data on the screen (pad data) and the shows will break up their shows among current topics being discussed so when you have a recorded show you can skip to the different parts.

 

+1

My dad has XM in his honda and it sucks.

We have Sirius in my moms SUV and my dads truck.

Its WAYYY better.

 

http://music.aol.com/radioguide/bb Go there, click on Radio. AOL offers XM free online, most all channels. No user name required. Test drive it for a few days and see if it's working out for you. They got a lot of programs.

 

I used to love having Digital Cable Radio (DCR) on my cable system in Va Beach. It was a separate cable box with audio line out to my stereo amp. I had that on all the time. The best part was there was no talk at all. If you wanted to know what was playing, you called an 800 number.

DCR became "Music Choice" and got integrated with the video box, but it seemed like the selection of artists became more limited.

A few years back, DirecTV replaced Music Choice with XM, and I almost never bother with it now. Way too much talk, and very limited music styles.

But I hear XM has a new slogan: "You can't be Sirius".