SIRIUS Satellite Radio?

Hi,
i've been looking at the SIRIUS satellite radio network devices, and i particularly like this one:

JVC KT-SR2000

any opinons?

neg

Well, I just bought XM for my wife. It is even more cool than I expected it to be. Totally worth the monthly fee.

Go for it, just get it!

I am curious?? do the XM radios work from cellsites or actual satellite?

the SIRIUS network is a REAL satellite network made of 3 satellites. but i just found out that us down in australia cant get sirius! WAAAAH!!!!!! oh well. what do you think of the lifetime plan? 500 bucks and you have SIRIUS until your radio goes kaput!

neg

Well both Sirius and XM are satellite based but I don't know about the future of them having comercial free stations and that for Me would be a major reson for owning one.
I do know the Sirius had a change of leadership and their current CEO or leader has publicly stated that comercial free radio was not a viable busness model. I would hate to pay 10 bucks a month to have adds to listen too. I don't know where XM radio stands on that little ishue.
I do know a coworker has the XM radio boom box and they seem to be quite happy with it.

Hi all,
I have an XM and have been happy with it for the last two weeks.

I want nothing to do with a company who will hire Howard Stern, what a turkey.

Later dudes
Jack Crow in the first world

XM has come out with a new portable radio, check it out here.

http://shopdelphi.com/products/consumers/myfi

Best Buy and C City also carry them.

I have em both and love em. Both services use ground based repeaters for areas where its difficult to get a signal from space into like cities. BOth services offer streaming online and you can always get an fm transmitter to pump your tunes into a place where you can not get a signal.

http://www.wheelchairmodifications.org/satellite_radio.htm

I had xm on my electric wheelchair and sirius in my bed room with an fm modulator to transmit it throughout my apartment.

Since all my favorite radios stations here in the Austin area have changed formats, I'd like to go satelite. How's the recieption in the house? What issues are you having with the antenna? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

chiphead

That is an issue. Its hard to say for YOUR area. Sat radio can be picked up from canada, mexico and several hundred miles off the coast.

Either service has a preview channel to test the signal to see if you can get a signal where you want to install it. Lets not forget the streaming online, which I can get by a dial up connection.

If a local repeater is near by you can get a signal anywhere. If you are in a rural area with a repeater you must depend on a signal from the sky from the satellites and it can vary from the material your house or office is made of, windows, bug screens, etc.

It is well worth it and folks have done strange things to get signals once they are hooked. Like me, I have my sirius in my bedroom where it can get a signal and use an fm modulator to transmit it inside my apartment to hear by a radio. Some folks who drive a lot setup a fm transmitter in their car and leave it on so they can tune it in inside their home or office.

[ QUOTE ]
Neg2LED said:
... but i just found out that us down in australia cant get sirius! WAAAAH!!!!!! ...

neg

[/ QUOTE ]

If a relocation to Darwin is in your future, this could be just the ticket:

Worldspace AsiaStar Coverage Map

They share a couple of programming channels with XM.

About reception: For once living near DC has been a good thing - repeaters all over the place here. I vacuumed my apartment while listening to the MyFi on my belt and didn't get a single drop-out.
It will record five hours of programming (some people are getting much more - depends on the bit rate of the particular channel). Recording is either on a pre-programmed sked or by a manual button push.

So, you can drop it in the home cradle, hit "record" on your favorite channel, and go to bed. In the morning you'll have charged batteries and 5+ hours of music in the bank that you can play back if you're in an area you can't get reception.

Cobb: I like the FM modulator in the parked car trick. That's pretty cool - a roving, public access FM translator /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I use the MyFi's built-in FM modulator in my apartment, rather than a line in to my stereo. That allows me to listen to XM on the various FM radios scattered about the place.

For the car, I'm using a line input to the stereo.

Once you get hooked on satellite radio, you will do some crazy things to get your fix.

Cheers,
Bob

a review of sirius new portable said that it sounded highly compressed

then you are re transmitting that sound with a fm modulator ?

does the music sound any better than a good cassette ?

I bet not.

Sorry, I don't know anything about Sirius. Maybe somebody else can comment? The sound on high bitrate channels of XM (music) is, to my ears, CD quality when connected to an amp via a line level input.

I use the FM modulator for rebroadcast to the bathroom, kitchen, etc where FM quality is plenty good enough.

A couple of XM radios were hacked to add a digital (S/PDIF) output for maximum quality, as some had complained that the DA chips in the radio didn't wring all the potential quality from the signal. There's now a commercial (Polk) XM tuner with a factory digital output.

If you get a chance to try a MyFi, I'd recommend channel 27, Cinemagic, which really demonstrates the potential of the system. (And bring your own headphones!) It's a lot better than a cassette.

The quality on non-music channels varies from tolerable to awful. The traffic and weather channels (which cover a lot of metro areas) sound like a very cheap digital answering machine. The talk channels have been a topic of conversation on the user websites for having been recently downgraded in quality. I don't really listen to those anyplace but a noisy car, so I don't know if that's true or not, but the quality of those channels is somewhere between AM and FM radio to me.

Anyway, don't write it off without a listen.

Cheers,
Bob /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

All,
For what it's worth VA Bob is on the beam.

Some of the music has a slightly elevated 'hiss' component in it.

The fix for this I have not had the time to track down.

Couple of guesses.

1
the lousy switching supply in the XM power plug. The unit runs on 6vdc and rather than use a quiet linear regulator in the power plug, they use a switcher. I can hear an audio quality change when I wrap my hand around the plug. The noise floor in the receiver goes down. Will try and pick up some ferrites and see if that helps. If not, will buy some LM 317's and make a linear regulator for +6 volts. May make a second one for the FM modulator Ive been using. That little bit of joy runs at +3 volts.

It's amazing how much effort was taken to make this receiver and how little effort was spent on the power plug. They could have made the thing 12 volts and saved a lot of people greif.

Back to compresion,

I heard it during a quiet passage in a song. It sounded like the music was wheezing. Was ready to spray my inhailer into the radio.

That's it for now.

I've had XM in both my car and my fiance's car for about 1.5 years and cannot do without it now.

Sounds great and love the selection.

Jack:

I'm running the MyFi via the following lash-up in my car, just in case it's of any interest:

12 volt feed tapped from cigarette lighter wiring harness through a 10 amp fuse. That goes into about ten turns around a square ferrite core from my junkbox, then to a Radio Shack 10 amp alternator filter unit. That in turn feeds a +5v switcher, which then feeds power to the MyFi (+5 vs. +6 for the Roady). The audio out from the MyFi goes through a pre-amp and then a ground loop isolator to the line-in on my Blaupunkt MP3000 head unit.
I needed the pre-amp to drive the headunit's line in to a reasonable level. I suspect the line in was really set up for a low impedance drive (i.e. walkman headphone output) and the high-impedance line out on the MyFi couldn't drive it. Might have gotten away with a couple of tranformers, but I had the amp handy.

I did notice a considerable amount of fixed level digital noise before I put in the ground loop isolator.

My guess on why the Roady runs on +6 is that they simply didn't have room for a switcher in the case to step it down to the +5v that I bet it runs on internally.
With only one volt to drop, they can do that with a compact linear regulator without generating too much heat. Dropping 12 to 5 at nearly an amp would have produced too much heat in the Roady.

(BTW I notice mine would run on anything between 7 and about 5.5 without complaining too much.)

Cheers,
Bob

Bob,
I spent a pile of money yesterday at an electronics dealer. Got parts to make two LM 317 regulators. One will be on 6 volts for the XM and the other will be on 3 volts for the FM modulator. Im surprised to hear the XM draws nearly an amp!

Since Im using the FM, I most likely won't need the isolator.

Right now I have time to work on this w/o being rushed.

Later dude
Jack Crow

Does anyone know of a site or a source for 'gray market' Sirius or XM radios for deprived Canadians? Neither XM nor Sirius radio is 'legal' yet in Canada -- go figure.

Jack:
Check out www.xmfan.com here's a link to a post I did a while back on Roady power consumption:
http://www.xmfan.com/viewtopic.php?p=237759&highlight=#237759

About 500 ma or so at 6 volts, so hopefully you won't have to go too crazy with heatsinking the 317's.

Bob,
Will give it a look over. So far so good. I now have something to read.

Later dude