XM or Sirius, Which is best?

benmar2000 · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 12:42 am

My wife and I are planning on taking some serious road trips this year.. We were talking today and was wondering which satellite radio is the best.. Both seem to offer the about the same thing.. Commercial free radio.. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Ben

pixeldzn · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 1:02 am

I have XM and love it. I have heard that Sirius can be more repetetive as far as playlists. That may or may not have been a skewed opinion. In any case, I'm happy with my choice.

Calvin56 · **Joined:** Fri Jul 08, 2005 1:59 am **Posts:** 345

I love my XM. I haven't tried Cirius, so I can't say anything good or bad about it.

Myke · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 5:53 am

I have Sirius, they do play a lot of stuff over but a lot let commercials than XM even though both are "commercial free" they have stupid little things about the station your listening too. Also Sirius is going to have Stern.

raceinfan · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 9:55 am

I love my XM also,BUT will be switching next year due to XM getting rid of my nascar channel :evil:

NOT HAPPY

benmar2000 · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 11:37 am

XM is getting rid of NASCAR? Man.. That was only thing that was leaning me towards XM... Thanks stinks..

Ben

raceinfan · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 12:01 pm

2007 they'll (NASCAR) be moving to sirius

Science_Guy · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 6:46 pm

I have sirius and love it. I honestly think that unless there is something specific you are looking for (i.e. Stern, NASCAR...), you will be happy with whatever you pick. XM does have almost twice the channels I am told but I have not looked into it myself.

donoskj · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:45 pm

I'm more than happy with XM. There is some repetition but for you hockey fans i hear they're signing a big deal with the NHL.

Neatus · **Posted:** Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:51 pm

From all the comotion with Sirius this year with them really charging hard with adding programming and the huge amount of advertising I would expect Sirius to take the lead on this one. I have it and am happy with it. My uncle has XM and he is happy with his choice as well. I guess it is just going to be your choice on this one.

CaKJFreedom · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:18 am

On the Sirius website you can register to listen online for a free three day trial. I would think XM would have the same thing. Try them both out and see which one you could like more.

allscan · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:32 am

I noticed that Sirius has a promo right now for $500 you basically get a lifetime subscription. However, I wonder what happens if Sirius gets sold off 2 years later. Oh yeah and this promo only last through January, so if you think it's a good deal, hurry up.

oldhockeyvb · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:15 pm

Love my XM and MLB

jelohead · **Posted:** Mon Dec 19, 2005 8:02 pm

i have xm and enjoy it alot. and, yes, xm has webcast for free as part of your paid subscription. nascar to sirius?? that sux....i wont go to sirius BECAUSE of stern.....anyway.....try lookin at both channel lineups and see which has more of what you like. good luck!

valoflyby · **Posted:** Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:59 pm

I have both services. I have factory Sirius in the CRD and factory XM in the Caddy CTS.

I feel that XM has better equipment both from a stand-alone receiver standpoint and from a satellite (and reception) standpoint. I feel that the programming on Sirius is better, although I agree about the repetition although it is important to keep in mind that you may hear the same song on a pop/rock station twice a day... if you listen to top twenty... then you're going to hear repetition far more frequently. My complaint about XM was that I felt that they didn't have any LOGIC to their mixes... for example, you'd be listening to a station like the 80's and you'd go right from Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls" to Whitney Houston's "How Will I know". Are they both 80's songs? Sure... but give me a break; those songs aren't even close. And on other stations, which are genre specific... it seemed that they'll dump ALL the songs of that genre into the mixmaster. The problem w/ that is that there's only (perhaps) three out of nine songs that are good on any album and the rest are crap. Why am I sitting here listening to these unknown/never heard songs that ARE crap? (b/c they don't have any people confirming the mix, perhaps?)

Having said that I PREFER the Sirius programing (I have a Sirius Sporster on my motorcycle)... EITHER is worlds better than FM and moron DJs. I agree w/ jelohead in that the addition of Stern makes me want to have absolutely nothing to do w/ Sirius. Egad!

Really, if you were to flip a coin and pick one... you'll think it rocks. They're just THAT much better than FM.

- Jeff

benmar2000 · **Posted:** Wed Dec 21, 2005 4:42 pm

Well.. I think that I will have to go over to Best Buy or Circiut City and just sample both and then decide which one I would like... Take a look at hardware also... But that is going to be after the holidays.. I avoid all the stores, malls, whatever places until after the holidays.. Sitting traffic stinks no matter what you drive... Makes me want to put the Libby in 4LO and go car crawling... LOL.. ROFL

Thanks for the input and advice..

Ben

P.S. I would like to listen to Howard Stern on Sirus just one time.. See how much of a format change he does... Can someone say X-Rated...

raceinfan · **Posted:** Wed Dec 21, 2005 5:11 pm

I'm only switching in 2007 for my NASCAR FIX (god I love that) don't realy care for Stern,but my XM has been awesome so far,like I said they lose Nascar they lose me

tyrob · **Posted:** Thu Dec 22, 2005 12:10 am

I have had XM for two years. They carry ACC sports, I am a huge Tarheel fan so that sold me. I am really happy with all of the channel seletion and after the first of the year they are suppose to add a lot more channels. XM also has over 70% of the satalite radio market, that speaks volumes. You also get to listen to XM on the computer for free with a subscription.

If they could just get the NFL I would live in my car!!!

-Ty

valoflyby · **Posted:** Thu Dec 22, 2005 3:46 pm

tyrob wrote:

I have had XM for two years. They carry ACC sports, I am a huge Tarheel fan so that sold me. I am really happy with all of the channel seletion and after the first of the year they are suppose to add a lot more channels. XM also has over 70% of the satalite radio market, that speaks volumes. You also get to listen to XM on the computer for free with a subscription.

If they could just get the NFL I would live in my car!!!

-Ty

Ty - Same w/ Sirius w/ regards to listening on the computer. Actually Sirius had the "free" part of that first. When I started my XM subscription, it was $9.99/mo and you had to pay an additional $5 for the computer listening option. They changed that earlier this year to a $12.99 and now INCLUDES the computer.

Back when I first got XM they had just surpassed 1 million customers to Sirius' 250k. A year and a half later, XM's got 5 million to Sirius' 2.2m. Sirius has NFL and you can listen to either the home broadcast or the away broadcast. Neither one is going away w/ a subscriber base that large. Could they be bought out? Perhaps. But I wouldn't base my decision on whether one is going to be around and the other not when they both have millions of subscribers. I would be more concerned w/ one of them having to sell commercial space to make up the differences.

The bear about adding a "bunch of channels" in addition to what they currently have is that it all takes up bandwidth. If you only have a fixed transmission rate, the only way to add more channels is to reduce the quality (bitrate) of the transmission. I look forward to seeing how that plays out. I'll be quite upset if the bitrate drops significantly to the point that soundquality suffers. I'd prefer to see fewer news channels (gee... do we really need fox, cnn, msnbc, bloomburg, etc?) and actually pump UP the bitrate on the music stations, but I suspect that the news channels are more "profitable" (they're both loosing money) than the commercial free music ones.

Really, XM vs. Sirius is as worthy a question as is "which religion is better?".

- Jeff

Guest · **Posted:** Sun Dec 25, 2005 6:44 pm

having driven my mom's Sirius-eqipped Sequoia for an entire week, I'm installing my XM stuff today (see my post if you can help me out:)), i'll let ya know in a couple days which is "better".

BTW, whatever religion that embraces alcohol, 4 wheeling, firearms, and video games is the one for me. (not necessarily all at the same time)

XM or Sirius, Which is best?

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