I’ve been considering trying out either Sirius or XM satellite radio, but thought I’d query here first.
Anybody use satellite radio?
Anyone know if either Sirius or XM has more world music content (esp. ITM, but also that of other cultures)?
Anyone noticed a difference in quality between the two players, whether of programming or signal quality?
Anything else I ought to consider before deciding whether to give on eof these services a shot?
Thanks in advance, O font of collective knowledge.
One of my daughters has it but I don’t know which one. All I know is that I was unable to find ANY Celtic anything, forget about ITM.
I’d have gone for one if I could get ITM since I’m in the car for at least 5 hours a day on my mail route.
reception is no better than fm radio, plus it costs money.
That’s not my experience. I had XM radio for a few years, and the reception was perfect. Only in very long tunnels does the signal ever poop out.
Satellite is great if you drive long distances, where your FM radio stations can fuzz out minutes after you find a new one on the dial. Here you have a radio that can tune in to over a hundred stations and receive any one of them anywhere.
And the stations are genuinely different from one another, with lots of specialty stations for music you don’t hear on the radio. If you like bluegrass, XM has a fantastic bluegrass station, I think channel 14.
It’s also commercial free, which was no big deal when I was a kid and commercial breaks were short. But now FM radio has about 20 minutes of commercials every hour. I would sometimes commute to work entirely within the span of a single commercial break. XM is definitely a luxury compared to the normal-type radio.
The big disadvantages are (1) cost of a receiver, and (2) specialty channels are occasionally replaced. That’s why I canceled mine, because they had an awesome channel I listened to every day that was exactly what I wanted, but it was dropped when they reorganized. I still liked the bluegrass channel, but without XM30 I could use the money for other things.
Caj
I forgot to add: if you’re looking for ITM, you might not find it on XM. I know they didn’t have a dedicated ITM channel. And if you’re really into ITM, you really don’t feel like sitting through a bunch of new-age music just because that channel occasionally plays the Chieftains.
I don’t know about Sirius. BTW, you can probably get a dual-service radio, so if XM isn’t your bag you can switch to Sirius w/o buying a new receiver.
Caj
So I’m in the local cafe, and they have Sirius satellite radio. It seems they also have a bluegrass channel.
A friend of mine plays the banjo. It was fun to see his reaction when he’d play a few bars of some bluegrass tune, and I’d say, “hey, I just heard that on the radio.” I guess banjo players don’t expect to hear that.
Caj