Just Ordered Sirius

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Steve,


I can give a little bit of insight since I had XM for close to a year and a half, and then switched over to Sirius this past August. I HAD the SkyFi portable unit for XM, and currently have the same Audiovox PNP2 that you just ordered with home and car kits. I have the in-home cradle connected to a 4 year old Sony STR-DE835 (DD and DTS) receiver via the RCA outputs. The car cradle has the built in FM modulator, but I use the cassette adapter.


My experiences for XM were very good. Both car and home cradles were connected the same way as I have the Sirius unit(only diff is the XM unit was connected to a bedroom receiver, a Yamaha HTR-5590, and I also had the wireless FM modulator for receiver as well so I could free up the cassette player if I wanted). The sound via the RCA outputs was the best by far. The cassette was good(by the way, NEITHER ONE is CD quality. If you are expecting that, forget it. THEY DO SOUND GOOD THOUGH) followed last by the FM modulator, which had alot of hissing background interference. Finding an unused station is a pain since there is a limitation to what stations are available to use on the modulator. I found the cassette works well enough for me. If my radio(manufacturer model) had an AUX input, I would DEFINITELY go that route as that tends to sound the best for the car. Antenna was attached to the roof. No Dropouts(except overpass's and HEAVY FOILAGE and mountains sometimes. VERY Reliable. XM content is what eventually drove me to Sirius. Their music content is SUPER DEEP. Their playlist's for any era must be endless. I found myself switching quite a bit to find a song that I liked, but this is not the fault of XM. It is just my personal taste. The entertainment channels, sports channels are pretty similiar to Sirius, with some differences. But the main thing that drove me away(and this before Wed announcement for the deal with MLB) was that XM was doing nothing to improve their products content while Sirius got things that I felt were desirable(NFL, college sports[footbal mainly]and eventually Howard Stern) to me. XM was stuck in the mud in my opinion, so I switched.


I like Sirius music content much more, plus they had the above mentioned services that XM did not.


But I will tell you one place Sirius SERIOUSLY(no pun intended) LAGS behind XM and that is INDOOR ANTENNA RECEPTION. I hope you have better luck than I did.


WHAT A COLLOSAL PAIN IN THE A** for the Sirius unit. The XM BLEW the indoor antenna reception out of the water. I had the XM in a bedroom which has windows facing the Southern sky. There is a bedroom above as well. I first pointed it out a window to begin with as directed but would get 2-3 bars filled on the satellite reception(NO terrestrial reception for either service near me to have), but mainly 2 bars. It would fluctuate. Then one day I moved the antenna about 4 feet to my left(facing the window) to clean and placed it on an end table pointing at almost an angle that points the antenna to the south. Even though the antenna was now pointed at a wall(which they don't recommend) I got FULL(all 4 bars) antenna reception. Go figure. Full all the time. No problems at all with foilage in the spring or summer, bad storms, or just plain lousy weather. BEAUTIFUL RECEPTION ALL THE TIME.


THE SIRIUS IS ANOTHER MATTER. Like stated above I INITIALLY had the Sirius unit in the same bedroom after I made the switch. Now that bedroom lies in the SOUTHERN PART of the house(window faces south). The Sirius satellite's, according to them, lie in the NORTHERN SKY. This was just the beginning of my problems. I tried everything(short of putting the antenna OUTSIDE, which I didn't want to do) possible. People on these forums continually reminded me that this was an indoor/outdoor antenna. I got the same stupid responses all the time. "JUST PUT IT OUTSIDE". If I wanted it outside I would have bought an OUTDOOR antenna. The luxury of having it indoors is so that you don't have to do that. I love Sirius everyone, but their INDOOR ANTENNA RECEPTION SUCKS!! compared to XM.


I pointed the antenna at a 90 degree(straight up) angle like I was told but still nothing. I was getting PIS*** OFF!! So I decided I would try to move the unit to the other side of the house(northern side). I have family room which has a receiver and would connect it to that. again at first nothing. NOW I WAS REALLY PISS**. This back room had motion sensors for an alarm, and I thought that might be interfering with reception somehow. The room has 4 Skylight Windows in the ceiling, a sliding glass door looking out to the north/northern sky, and I had the unit pointed straight up again. I FINALLY FOUND A SPOT pointing the antenna straight up, about 7-8 feet to the right of a skylight at the ceiling. The antenna is placed on top of a speaker that is on top of a home entertainment center. I currently get about 7 boxes regularly with FULL antenna reception when the birds pass over at the right time. BUT WHAT A PAIN!! I hope you have better luck with your indoor antenna reception thean I did. I think I read somewhere that the Sirius birds are in some sort of eliptical motion or something in the NORTHERN SKY whereas the XM satellites are stationary in the Southern Sky(I KNOW THEY MOVE AND SO DOES THE EARTH, but they give the illusion of not moving). I don't understand that though. Someone else can explain why the indoor reception of XM is just better than Sirius.


The car unit for Sirius works the same as the XM unit. VERY WELL. It is a little bigger, but I was not put off by that, and you may not be either if you decide to put it in your car.


Overall I prefer Sirius over XM. I like their current(NFL, and music) content better than XM, and their future(Howard Stern) content as well. It STONKS that Sirius didn't get MLB, but I am glad that BOTH companies now have something that people want. It will spur growth for both companies, and keep prices down for the consumer.


In the end it was Sirius for me after a year and a half of XM. If they can somehow improve the indoor reception, it would be a no-brainer for me.

I have NO local repeaters for either service near me. All of my reception is satellite driven.


The closest thing to a repeater that I ever saw registered on either(xm or sirius) was a terestrial signal(repeater) near a CC that is about 30 miles from me.(This was for the XM SkyFi PNP)


There has been NO repeaters(I live in a Rural area about 50 miles North of Downtown Pittsburgh) in my area.


XM indoor antenna use just proved(WITHOUT HAVING TO PLACE IT OUTSIDE) to be 100 times better than Sirius IMHO. And from the general feeling I get from reading posts, this is the case.


Sirius needs to improve on this issue.

I like the deeper playlists of XM, and from what I heard between a few 3 day trials of Sirius online and from browsing at my uncles house from Dish Network, I don't much care for Sirius, I like XM much better. But that's after being an XM subscriber for well over a year and getting a chance to know the service and having limited listening time with Sirius. My main purpose for getting Sirius was to protest the FCC, and use it as I use FM now. XM is my main source of live music, and will always be, I occasionally tune to FM and flip around, now Sirius will be my FM. Plus with this deal, I couldn't refuse and it looks good, as very staunch XM supporter that I subscribe to both


Antenna placement won't be an issue, I know I'll have to place it outside. I can't get XM reception inside (from either satellites or the repeaters) and I'm guessing I'll have the same problem with Sirius. I placed it by the window faced it south, tried facing it towards the repeaters, put it in every place at every direction, and nothing. I spent the first three hours of my XM subscription life tying to get a signal from inside my house and I couldn’t. I was almost ready to take the ting back to Sears and give up on satellite radio. And this is why I returned my XM boombox. The antenna is mounted on my roof, there’s a place on either side I can mount the Sirius antenna.


BTW- It's now Saturday afternoon, two days after I ordered it and I don't have a Sirius receiver in my room.

Well my Sirius equipment arrived this afternoon. I was excited, but now the initial excitement is wearing off. I am able to get reception from inside of my bedroom from repeaters, I get dropouts every once in a while, but tomorrow I'll fish the antenna out of my basement and on to my roof. To my surprise, I like the Audiovox PNP2 better then the SkyFi. The onscreen clock is really nice, remote has a better range and I think being able to access the menu via the remote. Content wise, I think I should have just bought this stuff at Best Buy and returned it after a month or less. I’ve been flipping between Alt Nation, Hard Attack, Faction, Octane and Buzzsaw and other then Buzzsaw I’m disappointed in those channels compared to XM. And that DJ on Alt Nation makes some of the local DJ around here sound intelligent, she’s annoying an belongs on the Top 40 streams not a rock stream The traffic and weather channels on Sirius sound much better then XMs though.


I haven’t listened enough, but my initial concensious is that I just make a $158 mistake. Oh well, live and learn.

I have to agree with dkraut on this Steve.


Give it a chance, but after re-reading one of your posts, it sounds like you should have NEVER gone to Sirius to begin with. But don't bail out yet.


XM's Playlist is DEEPER. No question or argument there. Sirius's Playlist was DEEP ENOUGH for me. I liked their playlist selection BETTER than XM, but that is my opinion. I like the NFL(I will miss MLB on XM though ) and cannot wait until Howard Stern comes on the air in 2006(I will listen locally until then)


If music is all that matters, than I think you should sell your equipment and go back to XM alone. BOTH services offer basically the same ENTERTAINMENT type channels, with some minor selection differences. Sports is obviously different between the two, but unless you want to spend over $240/year on radio, that is your perogitive.


I made a choice and will stick with it. That does not ever rule out that I will switch back to XM, but it will take ALOT for me to do so.


Stick it out. You may like it more than you think.

After some more in-depth listening, Sirius isn't the mistake I thought it was. Yes, I would have rather purchased the SkyFi 2 now and bought Sirius at a later date and yes, If I could only chose one SDARS service, no question about it, XM. But I'm able to subscribe to both and get the best of both worlds, add that with Music choice on DirecTV and I have nearly 170 channels of commercial free and more importantly FCC free music.


Sirius is starting to grow on me. I still refuse to listen to Alt Nation unless they terminate Madison (I think that's her name), but some of the other streams are pretty good and I know this is a touchy subject, but to my ears Sirius sounds a little better on music, for Talk they’re about the same. I will start off listening to Savage on XM, then switch over to Sirius, then switch back, I forget which service it is, but one is maybe 2 seconds behind the other, if it wasn’t for that lag and the brief pause from changing outputs on my home theater receiver I probably wouldn’t even notice it’s from a different source. Buzzsaw still continues to be the focus of my attention. I even heard some Accept on 19, never heard them on Bone Yard.


In my other musical tastes, Watercolors and Jazz Café are very close musicwise, but the thing that keeps me on Watercolors is Trinity. Her voice just screams contemporary jazz DJ, and she is very intelligent and really enhances the station. C Jazz was something I listened to as background noise but now I listen to it frequently and even have a favorite artist, Michael Lington. 60’s Vibrations is also better then what I thought it would be, but in the end it comes down to personality, and Terry Motormouth just does it for me.


Both services have their strong points are have areas they could improve upon, I have gained a lot more respect for Sirius then I used to have and I will most likely continue the service after my 6 month contract runs out. In a very broad generalization to my tastes and experiences, Sirius wins when it comes to hardware and sound quality, but XM hits it where it counts the most, programming, a deep musical library with fun, intelligent personalities who make the station, not degrade it. I know this sounds odd coming from a strong supporter of shock talk, but when I mean intelligent personalities, I mean disc jockeys, who are there to enhance the main part of the channel, the music.

I know amazing ain’t it


For the past year I have been ragging on Sirius unfairly, and now after actually having the service, and more importantly, giving it a chance, a lot of what I said was uncalled for. I was really wrong in making prejudice statements on hardly any listening experience.


And while on the subject of me eating my own words, I’d tune into Faction right now, but I’m currently glued to The Beat. I was flipping trough the dial yesterday morning before I went to work and by a fluke saw the tile of a song I really like, I backed up and it was on a dance channel. It was the dance version of Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’ (forgot who it was by) and have basically exploring the dance line up ever since. Dance/electronica is something I never really understood and swore was one of the things I’d never listen to, and while I probably couldn’t tell you the difference between underground house, trip hop and trance some of the stuff I’ve heard is pretty darn good. Favorite tune so far, besides the one I mentioned, has to be ‘This Is Your Night’ by Amber.


I hate to admit it, but it seems my musical horizons are expanding beyond death metal, hard alt, hard classic rock and alt country.

Quote:
Steve,


I have read your messages with interest, as I have been thinking about jumping into the Sirius pool (mainly for Howard Stern -- I want to get everything all set up BEFORE he moves, just in case it happens earlier than expected). However, I was very dismayed to see that although the music channels are advertised as "commercial-free," that they still have *DJs.* Do you know if this is the case on ALL the music channels? That would really be a sore point with me, and with my wife, who is really looking for some rock stations that just play music and NOTHING else (ie: no talking at all).


This really hit me out of the blue -- I was somehow under the impression that these channels were "DJ-free."


--Bill R.

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you can go to Howards webpage for a 7 day free pass.....


it will stream on your computer.

http://www.howardstern.com/sirius.php