I got a Sirius radio unit for christmas from my girlfriend and have been using it for a couple of weeks now. I thought I would post some impressions in case others where considering it.
Cost
The first thing I should touch on is price. It’s roughly 14 bucks a month for service. IMO that is a little high for what I personally get out of it (more on that later). However my girlfriend included a gift card that paid a portion of the intial setup fee and several months of programming. For a little more money I was able to get a years subscription, making it desirable to me.
Set Up
After deciding on the one year plan, I went to the website above and started the process to get it working. This is kind of a PITA. While in and of itself, it is really a matter of telling them what you unit you have, and giving them your credit card, it doesn’t quite play out that way. See you have to give them the numbers from the back of the unit…and at roughly the same time you have to have it plugged in, turned on and the antenna placed…this leads to going in and out of the house a few times (if you only have the car unit) to get it accomplished. Not exaclty the Oregon Trail mind you, but a pain.
Sound
My car stereo doesn’t have a line-in so I have to use the built in FM modulator (or one can buy the external modulator). The sound quality is about what I expected from the unit. It sounds pretty much the same as regular FM radio. I would imagine having a line-in would make a pretty decent difference, and is something I may look at in the future.
Programming
If you are interested in satillite radio I imagine you already have an idea of what the different services offer, and that will probably go a long way toward making your decsion as to which service to get. It was that way for me at least. I love NPR, and I hate loosing it and trying to find the local carrier when on long trips. That, and the other clincher for me is the contract Sirius has with the NFL. They broadcast all the NFL games live. This to me is a no brianer. So aside from getting 3 different NPR stations and all the NFL football games, I also listen to a lot of the sports coverage. There are a bunch of stations, including one I rather like called NFLRadio (channel 124). There is one downside. I haven’t listen to the music stations that much yet, so I can’t speak to them, however the sports and news stations all have commercials. This is dissappointing. I had hoped that paying for service instead of using regualr FM I could be free of that. (To be honest, if I decide not to sign up for another year at the end of this one, it will be because I think that having to listen to commercials on pay-for radio is a crappy way to treat subscribers). Some channels I realize are mearly rebroadcasting the regular feeds, and those come with commercials, however NFLRadio is a Sirius channel, and I find being advertized to on there offensive
Final Thoughts
I hope I haven’t left you with the impression that I don’t like the service. I do like it. I like it a lot. There are a few downsides (cost, commercials, sound quality with the FM modulator) however, getting to listen to the Steelers when they are not being broadcast on TV here and driving the other week to Altoona and not having to hunt and peck for NPR alone have been worth the price. I most likely will resubscribe next year…however if I do, it will probably be on a day that I didn’t have to listen to some huckster selling me “goto Meeting” instead of listening to the latest NFL news.
