What if satellite is popular to the pooint of being free?

What if Frogs had wings?

If the guy in one of those 20 cars has a newer or repaired PNP unit you'd be lucky to pick up his signal in his backseat let alone a car or 2 over.

I have a cheap no-name FM transmitter for my old iPod.
Picked it up at CompUSA a couple of years ago. The thing
is so powerful, running on just one AAA battery.

If I leave my iPod and the FM transmitter on inside the
car in my garage, my $20 shower radio at the other end
of the house can pick it up. (two floors up, 80 feet away,
with at least 9 rooms in between)

After reading your thread, I just realized that other drivers
might be picking up my music... assuming they have their
car radios tuned to 88.5...... (there's no FM station in my
area below 90.1, so I don't know why anybody would tune
to 88.5 in the first place)

If the FCC hadn't made both XM & Sirius fix their radios before selling any more, you could be right. However, none of the radios currently being sold have FM transmitter that exceed the legal limit. So, as people replace their old receivers with newer ones, the ability to pick up satellite programming from someone else's car will become more and more difficult.

Only like OTA, with commercials. Someday... Wasn't AM/FM like that?

i would rather just pay $13 each month than to ever have to listen to commercials again.

What if Cable TV becomes popular to the point of beign free?

At that distance then obviously it's a 3rd party FM transmitter... I have one on my XM home unit.. I can pick up the signal about a 1/4 mile away.. But I live in a city, so lots of building, etc. cut into the distance...

your not picking up a sirius signal your picking up a radio station that is carrying the sirius signal.
that is a pirated radio signal.

Many gyms have Sirius hooked up to several FM transmitters, so patrons can listen on their walkmans while working out. Often, these units can be heard for about a city block or so.

Other times, people enjoy "playing broadcaster", by putting some "forbidden" channel, like Howard, on the air. They often use a "pirate" transmitter, which is fairly high-powered.

We used to have a very interesting pirate FM station here in SLC. It played a great variety of music, and had a signal that covered a radius of about ten miles. Many broadcasters knew about it, but didn't make a fuss as long as it didn't interfere with anyone else. Eventually, some rimshot station decided that, if the frequency was clear enough for a pirate, it was clear enough to license a booster.

If they had been smart, they would have hired the kids that ran the pirate station. Those kids knew how to program a successful station .

Free???

...because satellites don't cost anything, especially when they wear out sooner than expected (as happened to XM a year or two ago).....