Sirius XM Radio

[Chris]

Do you know if there's something similar in Europe? I have never heard of satellite radio over here. Might be kinda interesting.

[OracleUsr]

My Sirius radio has been great on my lighthouse trips.  I wish I had taken it with me for use in the rental car on my last one; I didn't listen to anything the whole time.

[PAHighways]

Do you know if there's something similar in Europe? I have never heard of satellite radio over here. Might be kinda interesting.

WorldSpace provides a satellite radio service in Europe.

[HalifaxTravaler]

I am planning on getting Sirius radio very soon,as i like classic country and we just lost our local station.I jockey cars where i work at a port and sometimes sneak a listen to satalight radio when im driving a car that has it.lol,I definitely want sirius as i enjoy the nascar channel and xm doesn't offer that.

[golden eagle]

I have XM via DirecTV, though I only get the ones that originate from XM. I plan on getting one for my car within the next couple of months or so.
I like the old school hip-hop, 90s alternative and 80s channels the most. I also like the love songs channel. It helps me fall asleep at night.

[rickmastfan67]

A heads up to all you XM Radio subscribers.  They are going to be changing channels again on Wednesday.  Just heard it mentioned on mine.  At least they are giving a heads up unlike the last time.

[Alex]

Yup, got a notification in my email two days ago. Going to really mess up my presets, but what can you do? 

Here is the new list: http://www.siriusxm.com/pdf/11-1524_XM_WebLUs_5_4.pdf

[SP Cook]

Esentually, 95% of the channel numbers on SSR and XM will now be the same.  Traffic channels are being reduced nine channels, most shared between three cities.  Only NY and LA have their own channels now.  Only a few legal issues remain for a full merger.

- Their Canadian subsideries have not merged (each original company has a different Canadian partner) and thus the "Canadian content" channels on each remain different.  Both services toss their mandiated Canadian content in for US subscribers, but the Canadian government prevents them from airing US political talk channels to their subscribers.

- XM continues to air its "More" package.  These are six commercial carrying music and five talk channels programmed by Clear Channel, which is allocated that much space under an old XM contract. 

- XM continues to be the only home for play-by-play baseball.

- XM carries Fox Sports Radio while SSR carries Sporting News Radio.

- There a slight differences in each service's public radio offerings, due to an old SSR contract with NPR.

Unfortunatly, you still need the "Best of the other package" service.  XM subs need it for the NFL, NASCAR, Playboy, Spice, Martha Stewart, Howard Stern, and certain college games, while SSR subs need it for Oprah, Opie & Anthony, NHL, PGA, MLB's talk channel (no games on SSR), the Fantasy Sports Channel, and certain college games.

Satellites have lifespans, and one would assume that at some point they next generation of sats will be launched and they will go with one or the other system (the two systems are toally incompatable on a technical basis) and swap out the radios.

[oscar]

Yup, got a notification in my email two days ago. Going to really mess up my presets, but what can you do?  

Here is the new list: http://www.siriusxm.com/pdf/11-1524_XM_WebLUs_5_4.pdf

A similar change is underway for Sirius subscribers:  http://www.siriusxm.com/pdf/11-1524_SIR_WebLUs_5_4.pdf

One minus is that many of the traffic/local weather report channels will now squeeze three cities onto one channel, rather than the previous two.  For example, the Baltimore and Washington D.C. reports will now share a channel and time with Atlanta.  But Pittsburgh, which had long ago been dropped from the old lineup, will be restored to the new one.

On the plus side, some other channel arrangements will be in more logical order.  For example, MSNBC will finally be grouped with all the other news channels.

[1995hoo]

My Acura has voice control for the radio. This change is gonna mess me up bigtime. While I'll adjust the presets appropriately, no doubt I'll forget all the changes every time I use the voice control.

[SP Cook]

According to the websites, presets are supposed to follow the channels, as long as you let the system run its full update on the 4th without changing channels.   If you have a button set for ESPN it is going to remember ESPN, not the channel number.  Don't know how that will effect the voice control deal, though.

[rickmastfan67]

What I'm personally waiting for is to get CBC Radio 1 on my XM.  Believe it or not, there's some good stuff on it.  I've listened to it a lot when going to Canada on 740AM (doesn't exist anymore) and 99.1 FM (out of Toronto).  I've personally gotten 99.1 as far South as just outside of Erie, PA (no joke), and when it was 740, sometimes got it as far South as the North Hills of Pittsburgh.

[SSF]

I just wish SSR would be able to get the baseball games from the XM side.

Plus one of my car radios cant get the best of XM package period.  I cant wait for a full merger which means just one set of radios, tuners/ receivers, etc.

[1995hoo]

According to the websites, presets are supposed to follow the channels, as long as you let the system run its full update on the 4th without changing channels.   If you have a button set for ESPN it is going to remember ESPN, not the channel number.  Don't know how that will effect the voice control deal, though.

Interesting. Thanks. It won't affect the voice control because that works solely by channel number–if I say "XM channel 58" that's where it tunes, as the voice-control is part of the sat-nav and not anything to do with XM. But it'll be interesting to see if the presets do update.

[Henry]

I have XM in my Tahoe, and it's a great feature to have. For one thing, you can listen to the same station for a cross-country roadtrip. For another, there's an endless selection of channels.

In Seattle, my best bets on terrestrial radio are KISW and Warm 106.9, although my teenage daughter loves 106.1 Kiss FM. Thankfully, she now has her own car so I won't have to put up with the crappy pop music she likes!

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

I listen to XM radio via our Dish Network satelite package. Dish has been notifying us about the XM/Serius channel change since Thursday. Started to hear the radio promos for the change today. Not much I can do about reseting my favorites (via Dish) till after it happens.

[PAHighways]

One minus is that many of the traffic/local weather report channels will now squeeze three cities onto one channel, rather than the previous two.  For example, the Baltimore and Washington D.C. reports will now share a channel and time with Atlanta.  But Pittsburgh, which had long ago been dropped from the old lineup, will be restored to the new one.

I'm glad to see Sirius has reinstated Pittsburgh, but I am not a fan of combining the cities.

When I was an XM subscriber, I liked that each city had their own channel.  One of many things I was disappointed to see occur when Sirius took over, which is why I am an ex-XM subscriber, was that they combined the cities (except NYC and LA).  I was also disappointed to hear that the main Weather Channel feed and the emergency channels are gone, which filled the coverage gap outside the cities covered by the Traffic/Weather channels.

[1995hoo]

One minus is that many of the traffic/local weather report channels will now squeeze three cities onto one channel, rather than the previous two.  For example, the Baltimore and Washington D.C. reports will now share a channel and time with Atlanta.  But Pittsburgh, which had long ago been dropped from the old lineup, will be restored to the new one.

I'm glad to see Sirius has reinstated Pittsburgh, but I am not a fan of combining the cities.

When I was an XM subscriber, I liked that each city had their own channel.  One of many things I was disappointed to see occur when Sirius took over, which is why I am an ex-XM subscriber, was that they combined the cities (except NYC and LA).  I was also disappointed to hear that the main Weather Channel feed and the emergency channels are gone, which filled the coverage gap outside the cities covered by the Traffic/Weather channels.

I don't mind combining certain cities if they're close to each other such that the traffic may reasonably be expected either to overlap or to flow heavily between the two. For example, when Sirius took over, they added Baltimore to the DC channel. That's never bothered me all that much because the two cities are about 40 miles apart and a fair number of people commute between them; the FM-based traffic reports will sometimes (though not always) mention major incidents around the other city. But with the new revision to the channel lineup they're adding Atlanta to the DC/Baltimore channel. That doesn't make much sense to me because there's no overlap there. If another city had to be added to the DC/Baltimore channel, it seems like Philadelphia would be the most logical one due to proximity. Put differently, if you're leaving the Baltimore-Washington area and driving north, news of a major incident in the Philadelphia area may well be relevant to which route you take because it's close enough that you might get up that way before a particularly bad wreck or overturned truck can be cleared. The same is NOT the case with respect to Atlanta.

Of course, I recognize that in most of the country you don't have major cities as close to each other as you do in the DC-to-Boston corridor.

[PAHighways]

Baltimore/DC make sense, but Pittsburgh/Minneapolis and Detroit/Las Vegas do not.

If SiriusXM covered the same cities that their provider Traffic.com does, there would be more cities and ones closer to each other to group together.

[realjd]

We used to have Orlando/Tampa here and Miami/Atlanta. It will be convenient to get all three cities on the same channel.

[1995hoo]

I am happy to have found that my presets did indeed update automatically today when I clicked through them in turn. I didn't know whether only XM-branded equipment would do that or whether a car's factory stereo with built-in XM would as well. The answer was the latter.

Also, an interesting update regarding traffic: They're now announcing what times the traffic will be announced. For the DC/Baltimore/Atlanta channel, it's DC "on the 1s" (eg, x:01, x:11, x:21, etc.), Baltimore a few minutes after, and then Atlanta "on the 8s." I suppose it's helpful to know this rather than waiting through the other reports, but it's also frustrating that now the reports will run only every 10 minutes because that's what our local FM station does ("traffic and weather together on the 8s"). While I've never developed the level of confidence with XM's reports that I have with WTOP's, it was nice to be able to tune in the XM report if I knew the WTOP report wouldn't air for another 5 minutes. That advantage is sort of gone now.

What isn't clear is whether they will update the traffic reports more often than they used to. They used to be recorded and looped until there was an update. It's unclear whether that's still going to be the case, but I suspect it will.

[oscar]

Also, an interesting update regarding traffic: They're now announcing what times the traffic will be announced. For the DC/Baltimore/Atlanta channel, it's DC "on the 1s" (eg, x:01, x:11, x:21, etc.), Baltimore a few minutes after, and then Atlanta "on the 8s." I suppose it's helpful to know this rather than waiting through the other reports, but it's also frustrating that now the reports will run only every 10 minutes because that's what our local FM station does ("traffic and weather together on the 8s"). While I've never developed the level of confidence with XM's reports that I have with WTOP's, it was nice to be able to tune in the XM report if I knew the WTOP report wouldn't air for another 5 minutes. That advantage is sort of gone now.

What isn't clear is whether they will update the traffic reports more often than they used to. They used to be recorded and looped until there was an update. It's unclear whether that's still going to be the case, but I suspect it will.

At least the Sirius/XM and WTOP reports for DC will never overlap (the former always on the 1s, the latter always on the 8s), so you know which one will come up next, if you're om a hurry for a traffic report and can't wait for the usuallly superior WTOP report (which I'll be listening to more often, with the new Sirius/XM setup).

I suspect the "on the 1s" announcement will be just temporary until listeners get used to the new arrangement.  I'd bet it'll soon be replaced by an ad, rather than adding time to the traffic reports.

[1995hoo]

Also, an interesting update regarding traffic: They're now announcing what times the traffic will be announced. For the DC/Baltimore/Atlanta channel, it's DC "on the 1s" (eg, x:01, x:11, x:21, etc.), Baltimore a few minutes after, and then Atlanta "on the 8s." I suppose it's helpful to know this rather than waiting through the other reports, but it's also frustrating that now the reports will run only every 10 minutes because that's what our local FM station does ("traffic and weather together on the 8s"). While I've never developed the level of confidence with XM's reports that I have with WTOP's, it was nice to be able to tune in the XM report if I knew the WTOP report wouldn't air for another 5 minutes. That advantage is sort of gone now.

What isn't clear is whether they will update the traffic reports more often than they used to. They used to be recorded and looped until there was an update. It's unclear whether that's still going to be the case, but I suspect it will.

At least the Sirius/XM and WTOP reports for DC will never overlap (the former always on the 1s, the latter always on the 8s), so you know which one will come up next, if you're om a hurry for a traffic report and can't wait for the usuallly superior WTOP report (which I'll be listening to more often, with the new Sirius/XM setup).

I suspect the "on the 1s" announcement will be just temporary until listeners get used to the new arrangement.  I'd bet it'll soon be replaced by an ad, rather than adding time to the traffic reports.

I agree with you on both parts. I especially figured the announcement about the report timing is temporary. What I think is too bad is that "on the 1s" is so soon after "on the 8s." In other words, what I was getting at before is that if I leave home at, say, 8:04 AM to go downtown, I'll have to decide which route to use prior to the 8:08 AM WTOP report because I'll hit the light at the exit from my neighborhood before then. Previously I could listen to the XM report as I was leaving if I knew the WTOP report wouldn't come on. Now, not so much. I suppose at home the easy solution is "listen to the radio while getting dressed," but that's less convenient elsewhere. Oh well, that's life! Obviously XM shouldn't be expected to try to figure out when local FM (or AM) stations in the different markets run their reports and then try to tailor around that. It's unrealistic. (BTW, does WMAL still air traffic "on the 6s"? I know they did about 10 years ago, but I almost never listen to WMAL nor to any other AM station unless I need to pull in 1500 around the Pentagon because 107.7-FM doesn't come in clearly there.)

I am a bit less confident in WTOP's morning reports since that new reporter (Reena Kessler? Rita Kessler?) took over from Lisa Baden, though I suspect it's more that I find her voice and some of the expressions she uses to be annoying. Either way, I still have greater confidence in WTOP than I do in XM's reports in part because I know WTOP's reporters know the area. Several of XM's reporters have not learned how to conceal that they're reading directly from a computer display–I've heard a lot of them omit articles where they should use them (eg, "I-95 is stopped at Occoquan River Bridge") and I've also heard them throw in articles where they should not (they frequently refer to the town of Triangle down in Prince William County as "the Triangle," which is the name of a region of North Carolina).

[mightyace]

Another alternative is traffic info on your phone.

I use the traffic feature of Google maps and it is much more accurate than anything on the radio ever was.

[PAHighways]

Clear Channel's iHeartRadio app has traffic reports for certain cities.