Satellite radio - How do you like it?
 

Thinking about getting satellite radio for long car trips.

Does anybody have any suggestions/ideas/comments/complaints about it?

I LOVE the Stephanie Miller Show, which I see is on Sirius, so I might go with that, but I'm not sure.

Thanks!

I have a Sirius radio and think it's great for long trips. So many stations and no commercials on the music stations.

You can either hook it up directly (hardwire) it to your radio or it will play through your radion on an FM station that is not used for broadcast.

One caveat, on a recent trip I had to change the station the radio was playing through , because we had driven into a market that had a station broadcsting on my "chosen frequency". It's no big deal to change it..just be aware.

I would expect great bargains on satellite radios this season( maybe even free after rebate) as Sirius gears up for promotinons welcoming Howard Stern.

I would expect XM to offer similar specials.

I love my XM. I invested in Sirius, but I bought XM. I move it between office and home and am considering whether to put it in my car. I don't drive much, so am not so concerned about "car entertainment"

Complaints: none
Suggestions: get a system & accessories so you can use it everywhere as easily as possible. I have the SkyFi and it's really not portable, even if I bought the "boombox".
Ideas: in my office, I've plugged a set of powered PC computers into the audio output. The volume & quality are "good enough".

I saw a Sirius model at BJ's wholesale club Sunday for $150 that even had a small boombox/CD unit, along with home & car kits.

Effective today, Nov. 15, Directv now has XM satellite radio music in the 800 channel area. Give me a week, and I will let you know if I like it.

wally34949 -- update ??? It's been a month since your post. How do you like it?

We own three vehicles and now have XM in all -- one factory and two portable units. I love it for short drives, too. My favorite part is that I can hear songs that don't receive airplay anywhere else ---> some are from decades ago, some are from obscure artists.

I have XM. My biggest pet peeve is that they have precious little international or Hawaiian music and way too much country music programming. There were two world music stations, one of which was for African music. Now, there are two French pop music stations. Not one, but two. I don't get it. No Indian/African/Hawaiian/ exotic music at all. Unless you consider reggae to be world music.

I love it. No ridiculous commercials, no news except when I want it; great music set up by categories. I especially love the oldies, divided into decades (40s, 50s, 60s, etc.).

I have XM for my car, home and office and Sirius at home through Dish. I like both, however, the one complaint I have about Sirius is that they interrupt the music constantly, not with commercials but with station IDs. This is enough for me to not consider a paid subscription (it comes free bundled with my home Dish satellite system).

I also have XM via DirecTV. Since I usually listen to New Age music or old standards, I really liked the stations we used to have on DirecTV. I do not like the New Age channel that is now available on XM, and I'm not really sure which of the channels equates with the old 'Singers and Standards' channel. Some of them I have no idea what they play (what is 'Fred' or 'Lucy'?)

XM Radio is the best decision I ever made for both my vehicles; I'll never go back to the "morning drive" BS with mostly conjectures from a bunch of DJs and about three minutes of music per hour.

We have XM radio in both cars. It came with one. My husband installed it in the other for a few hundred dollars (as opposed to a couple of thousand as a dealer option). He got the materials he needed and directions through a website.
We both like it a lot. I only wish I had a portable unit as I don't spend much time in the car and don't want to sit in my garage listening. There's a lot of good programming. Check out the websites for both Sirius and XM and decide which works best for you. I imagine they are actually quite similar.
AG3046, How long have you had XM? XM has added quite a bit since we got the car 1 1/2 years ago. They used to have a world music channel (XM 100), called "Worldzone" that played lots of African music and even Hawaiian on occasion. It's been replaced by that French station, Air Musique. I imagine they will bring world music back, or it might already be there on a different station. You might want to complain to XM if you can't find it anywhere. Worldzone was great.

Our regional "Staples" office supply stores are selling the XM/Delphi "Roady2" radio for under $15 this week.

I bought 2 as gifts, and may go back to purchase a Roady2 for myself so I don't have to keep moving the unit I have around.

I agree that there are too many country and not enough international.

I have Sirius, which was the service available when I bought my car. I have absolutely no complaints. Well I guess my only complaint is that Satellite Radio makes you realize just how many commercials there are per hour in regular radio.

I have Sirius in my car. Too many things to listen to. Always make me wonder, "Hm, am I missing something better on the other channel?"

Or "Hm, should I listen to the 'home' radio or 'away' radio for this NFL game"? ;)