Are you Sirius?

[Shayne]

I sure am!  Got hooked up for Christmas by my fantastic fianc?.  I have the "Starmate 4" which is a fantastic little machine with features like "Game Alert" to let me know when my New England Patriots/Edmonton Oilers are playing and what the score is, "Replay" for when I have to pause the radio while taking a call, and "Artist Alert" to let me know when any station is busting out some Incubus.

I got to admit that it seems really funny to "pay for radio" when you can pull it out of the sky for free.  However it snowballed one morning when we drove from my place in Clairview to the office downtown and we heard 1 song during the entire 17 minute drive.  I had just about enough of the idiot DJs (Garner included), the horrible contests, and the abundance of commercials.

I have had this radio playing pretty much nonstop since I got it up and running late Christmas afternoon.  I love the stations "Alt Nation", "Octane", "Left of Center" and "Iceberg" (a Canadian channel (exclusive to Canadian artists)).  I can't forget ESPN and the NFL stations as they are wall to wall content.

Sound quality is comparable to FM with signal strength being around 80% no matter if I'm using the car kit or the home kit.  I've got a feeling it will be like a PVR to some people, in no time at all I will probably be one of those people who "can't live without it".

Kick ass.

[Lazybones]

There is a guy at work that listens to it non stop and loves it..

[Mr. Analog]

CKUA and CBC Radio 2 have been going just about nonstop for me the last few days...

[Shayne]

Sirius has "CBC Radio 3"

[Thorin]

We rented a vehicle in Mississippi with Sirius satellite radio built-in.  Nine days of "Kids Stuff" (it's a freakin' all-kids' music channel!) almost drove me bonkers at times.  With the good old radio, at least it sometimes goes out of range and I can say we have to listen to a CD or even just The Silence.

Ahh, The Silence.  Enjoy The Silence!

Another alternative is to get a portable in-car TV system, get all the kids headphones to wear while they listen to the movie, and enjoy all the screaming-guitar hard rock you can while driving the mommy-mobile.

But not having advertisements and annoying DJs is a definite plus!  And for that, I envy you...

[Lazybones]

We rented a vehicle in Mississippi with Sirius satellite radio built-in.  Nine days of "Kids Stuff" (it's a freakin' all-kids' music channel!) almost drove me bonkers at times.  With the good old radio, at least it sometimes goes out of range and I can say we have to listen to a CD or even just The Silence.

Ahh, The Silence.  Enjoy The Silence!

How to you list that as a disadvantage, was the kids stuff the only channel on your system? You could have listend to non stop anything else for the trip.

[Thorin]

No, kids have a way of "asking" every time you get in the car thus Kids Stuff was on almost constantly.  Having a station fade out as you're driving away from its source gives Dad an excuse to turn it off; the only time we lost reception was under heavy foliage or at gas stations/drive-thrus/drive-ins.

All I was really saying is that sometimes it's nice to just have no sound from the stereo (that changed in the last several years - the days before I had kids were filled with music all the time everywhere I drove, and most of the music really sucked ass so I probably shouldn't have cranked it), and Sirius makes it that much harder to turn it off.

was the kids stuff the only channel on your system? You could have listend to non stop anything else for the trip.

Yes, I know, I'm a bad parent for not putting my foot down and demanding that the kids listen to some good ol' Disturbed, or The Cure, or even Sarah McLachlan, like I want to.  It's just hard to explain some of those lyrics.

[Darren Dirt]

Some of the Wiggles' lyrics are hard to explain too

[Mr. Analog]

No! What you need to do is pick up the complete operatic works of Wagner and force your children to listen to that ad infinitum. As Mark Twain once said; "Wagner?s music is better than it sounds." as I'm sure your kidlings will discover...

[Shayne]

I guess the question is, did YOU discover the kids stations or did the kids   If it was you then I guess you only have yourself to blame.  You could have just said "wow all they got is the playboy channel guess we will have to listen to that" (sounds a lot better then it is.).

[Thorin]

It was in the vehicle, I was the driver, I flipped through the stations and picked Kids Stuff to see what it was like.

Back to my point - Sirius satellite radio is way cool and lets you listen to way more music than DJ.  However, a sneaky side-effect of good radio is that a person is less likely to turn it off and just listen to the silence (or make music in their head).

[Shayne]

Just to clarify Sirius does still have DJs, they still have commercials.

DJs on the radio stations are less obstructive then they are on traditional radio.  They introduce the songs, give tidbits about the artists, etc and play.  In the last hour I thought it would be interesting to see how much music vs. chit chat, and it came up as ~8 minutes of DJ speak in ~60 minutes, a little more then 10%.  Though I have to admit that the chit chat is actually sorta nice and informative in that they explained that Rob Zombie would be on the air to run the station for New Years, that X and X band are starting a North American tour, and that X band is releasing a new album soon and here is the lead single.

I will say that for the most part thats what DJs do on FM radio during the ours of 6pm - 6am, maybe in 9:30am - 11am, 1:30pm - 3pm.  Its the contests, the phone calls, the "man land", etc thats just nonsensical.

As for commercials they are on the non-music stations.  NFL Radio, ESPN Radio are loaded with them.  after 12 minutes you get 3 minutes of commercials.  And its not like the commercials we get on our radio its the type you get on TV.  "Sinus Buster will bust through the blockage!  Go to sinusbuster.com today!!!"

Playlist is rather smallish if you stay on one channel.  If you listen to Alt Nation exclusively for an entire day (8 hours) you will hear a majority of the songs 4 or 5 times.  That is a shame, but with many more channels to choose from I find I channel surf the radio now

I do like that the player tells you the name of the artist and the song, on many songs it has a little blurb after it as well "Like this song?  Channel 20 for more!"  I thought FM could do this?  I know that in my parents car it shows the station we are listening to why not broadcast the song and artist too?

I find I listen a lot to the Comedy channels as well, some funny stuff on there.

[Darren Dirt]

As for commercials they are on the non-music stations.  NFL Radio, ESPN Radio are loaded with them.  after 12 minutes you get 3 minutes of commercials.  And its not like the commercials we get on our radio its the type you get on TV.  "Sinus Buster will bust through the blockage!  Go to sinusbuster.com today!!!"

Sounds like most "Internet Radio"; 5-15 minutes of content, then 2-4 minutes of "buy this product! (to support our station)". It's a trade-off. That's why I hit "pause" on Real Player and 3 or 4 or 24 minutes later unpause and basically do a Tivo with audio

[Tom]

Wait, why would you pay for Sirius if it has commercials? Total rip off. Its ONE or the OTHER. Not BOTH.

I thought FM could do this?  I know that in my parents car it shows the station we are listening to why not broadcast the song and artist too

Well, FM itself isn't capable of it, but theres some "standards"/"technologies" out there to let stations broadcast data along with the audio, Though I hear its not used much in Noth America, while in Europe, they get weather, road reports, etc all via text streams.

[CowGirl]

I don't recall there any commercials when we listened in Mississippi. 

[Shayne]

The music stations are commercial free.  The other stations as far as I can tell are not run by Sirius but are instead broadcasted by Sirius.

[Thorin]

The Kids Stuff station would advertise itself (not any other product, though) every fifteen or twenty minutes.  And yes, on a long drive (two hours plus) we would get repeats of songs sometimes.  Kids love repetition; it lets them learn the songs real good.

I'll bet you're loving the NFL channels, eh?

edit: missed part of the end italics tag, everything was in italics, that's ugly, so I fixed it

[Shayne]

Yesterday I had to accompany my woman to shopping and dinner with her parents, i looked forward to the drive as I could check all the scores   Love it.  Damn cool machine.

[Mr. Analog]

Well, here it is two years down the road and I can finally see the tangible benefits to going Sirius...

I listen to a lot of music, but I've found that I'm in both a rut with local radio and more interested in listening to a good mix with no commercials.

I've looked at all the options, including the over the net streaming and after much consideration I will be heading down to an electronics store here at lunch to see if I can swing a deal or two.

[Lazybones]

I just listen to Digital internet music on my iPhone.
- I have a 6 GB data plain (may not be enough if you listen ALL day) which is more than enough for me to use it in the car
- There are iPhone/iPod docs for everything already (FM modulator / built into car / Alarm clocks /Stereo's)
- My personal music is already on the device
- If I had more personal music than can be stored there are ways to stream your music from home.
- Fits in my pocket and I can listen to it on the train to work (can't stream for underground areas)

[Mr. Analog]

Well, I have a decent mp3 player for commuting and I do sometimes listen to the radio during that time I'm just interested in the wealth of available content that I could be listening to while I'm drawing or working.

I have a pretty big mp3 collection and I'm building up a repository on Last.FM but where I run into trouble is the streaming parts. When I'm at work no streaming is allowed on the client network and at home I run into bandwidth quality issues with Tonnica playing pro TF2 and me wanting to listen to artifact-free music.

It finally makes sense for me to do!

[Lazybones]

Lets Break this down:

Cost of Hardware:
Sirius Stiletto 2 Portable Receiver (SL2TK1C) $279.99
iPhone 3G 8GB $199 on 3 year contract

Monthly Cost:
Phone Service + Sirius  $14.99 / mo month to month or $12.90 /mo on a 3 year term
iPhone Voice 400Min / Data 2GB $75 /mo

How much do you currently pay for your mobile phone?

I am sure there is special contact on Sirius but I can't see my self paying for Radio services. Maybe I just don't listen enough for it to matter.

Note that on a 6 GB plan I have my PEAK usage has been 750MB in a month. I could try running a radio stream all day at work to gather stats on it, however if you use WiFi you get around draining all your data.

[Mr. Analog]

Well I came back from the store and I couldn't find a model that suited my requirements, but what I did do was upgrade my mobile service.

[Lazybones]

but what I did do was upgrade my mobile service.

?

[Mr. Analog]

but what I did do was upgrade my mobile service.

?

Well, I was in the mall already, I had spare time, spare cash and a new plan offer waiting so I wandered up to yonder Telus store and finally upgraded.

I figure if it's going to take me a while to find the right radio that quest can go on the backburner while I got my hot little hands on a phone that wasn't hand-crafted by Alexander Graham Bell...

I suppose I'm all excited about it and put it in my comment there.

[Tonnica]

Mr. A is now ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US HTC Touch Pro owners. Hahaha I never thought I'd see the day when he'd forgo "simple is best" for a fancy-dancy Windows Mobile device.

He's got a pretty good data plan that's about $10 more than mine.

[Mr. Analog]

See now this is exactly what I want:
Tivoli's SIRIUS Table Radio

Next payday :-)

[Darren Dirt]

Mr. A is now ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US HTC Touch Pro owners.

Freaks.





Seriously though, the fact that it's running Windoze Mobeel = meh, but at least the popup keyboard allows a stylus or fingernail for clicking, not just fingertip touches (iPhone). I played around with Dionne's HTC last weekend, too many menus and of course (since it's a Microsoft OS) it makes default decisions on occasion that are contrary to what I would decide if MS didn't decide for me (I'll shut up now, I don't actually own the thing so on second thought forget my negativity, instead congrats Mr. A on moving into the 21st century )