XM radio review
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,772
Likes: 0
From: Signal Hill, SoCal
The XM Radio and Circuit city reps are at my office today. Since we launched their satellites for them they are doing an in house demo of their stuff with discounts. They brought their 2002 Saab 9-3 demo car from their web site giveaway.
Not too impressed really. Since I live in LA we have a bazillion channels of free radio anyways. If I lived in BFE it would be more attractive. They have 2 competing hardware manufacturers on hand. Sony and Pioneer. The Pioneer one seems the way to go since you can hide the receiver under a seat or in the trunk and just drop the little control plate somewhere on the dash. The Sony unit looks more like a Valentine 1 with its own little detachable bracket and it uses the tape deck interface. The Sony is transferrable between vehicles but sorta ugly. The antennas for both mount magnetically so you have to have an ugly wire running from the antenna into the car somewhere. The antennas look sorta like sharkfins and are not too bad.
The sound quality is good but not a lot better than FM to me. A lot of the channels are feeds from regular stations so all you are getting is a digital rebroadcast of an analog signal anyways. Quite a few of the channels do have commercials as well.
Overall Recommendation: If you live in ButtF**K Egypt and get nothing but the 24 Hour Jesus Channel. Go for it. If you are the ultimate gadget type: Get it. If you are your average music lover such as myself, I'd wait on it.
Not too impressed really. Since I live in LA we have a bazillion channels of free radio anyways. If I lived in BFE it would be more attractive. They have 2 competing hardware manufacturers on hand. Sony and Pioneer. The Pioneer one seems the way to go since you can hide the receiver under a seat or in the trunk and just drop the little control plate somewhere on the dash. The Sony unit looks more like a Valentine 1 with its own little detachable bracket and it uses the tape deck interface. The Sony is transferrable between vehicles but sorta ugly. The antennas for both mount magnetically so you have to have an ugly wire running from the antenna into the car somewhere. The antennas look sorta like sharkfins and are not too bad.
The sound quality is good but not a lot better than FM to me. A lot of the channels are feeds from regular stations so all you are getting is a digital rebroadcast of an analog signal anyways. Quite a few of the channels do have commercials as well.
Overall Recommendation: If you live in ButtF**K Egypt and get nothing but the 24 Hour Jesus Channel. Go for it. If you are the ultimate gadget type: Get it. If you are your average music lover such as myself, I'd wait on it.
Community Organizer
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 8,641
Likes: 143
From: Chapel Hill, NC
TrojanHorse that is pretty much the same conclusion that I came to!
If you HAVE to have a secific type of music to listen to all the time that you can't get get it. If you have to have the latest and greatest.
If not then just burn your cd's or get a MP3 player which Honestly only gives you FM sound quality.
If you HAVE to have a secific type of music to listen to all the time that you can't get get it. If you have to have the latest and greatest.
If not then just burn your cd's or get a MP3 player which Honestly only gives you FM sound quality.
