Satellite radio is beamed from satellites, in high-angle elliptical orbits over the U.S., to bring crisp digital-quality sound to your home, office, boat, or car. Satellite radio continues to rack up new subscribers as it gives listeners more choices in music streams, sports channels, equipment, and transportability.
To receive satellite radio you need a special radio receiver and a subscription to a satellite service. There are two major satellite services competing for satellite subscribers, Sirius radio and XM radio. At this time, each has proprietary equipment, so a potential customer will have to choose the equipment and service they want and cannot change to the other company with repurchasing new equipment.
You can acquire a satellite radio preinstalled in a new car, but now there are now other impressive options. For the last several months, I have been using the Sirius portable satellite radio system made by Audiovox. This package includes a portable radio tuner called a shuttle, a vehicle docking kit and a home docking kit. This allows you to listen to satellite radio in your home or office as well as in your automobile. You can also purchase docking kits for additional cars or locations. Then, you simply take the shuttle with you, plug it into the docking station and listen to satellite radio wherever you go.
Installation is fairly easy. For the car, the sticky backing of the shuttle base attaches to the dashboard with simple pressure. The small magnetic satellite antenna is made for placement on the outside of the roof of the car. You can run the cable through the sunroof or a window or you can perform a more professional installation. I found that the antenna worked fine inside the back window of my car, so I simply ran the wire along the floor and over the back seat. The vehicle docking kit comes with a power cable that fits into the cigarette lighter. You simply plug the unit in, and find an unused FM frequency to broadcast the signal out through your car speakers. If your car radio has a line-in jack, you can connect the unit to that. The unit works well under either scenario.
The home docking kit includes a docking station to hold the shuttle, an indoor/outdoor antenna, a power supply, and stereo cables. You hook docking up to a radio with the included cables, plug in the power supply, and place the antenna in a window or outside. You will have to experiment with the antenna to get the best signal. If there is a clear view of the sky from inside a window, the antenna can simply sit on the windowsill. Large pine trees surround my home, so I wound up running the antenna cable out a window and placing the antenna on my patio. The antenna is weatherproof and can also be mounted to your house, if you prefer.
Once you have your equipment in place, you call Sirius to start your service and you are on your way. Sirius has 65 channels of commercial-free music and 50 channels of sports, news, and entertainment. The stations are divided into categories so you can easily find jazz, news, rock, classic, comedy, etc. Sirius has made great inroads into the sporting world. Sirius is the official satellite radio partner of both the NFL and the NHL, broadcasting regular season games and post-season play. Sirius also has many choices of customized programming. They are the exclusive satellite radio carrier of NPR and Public Radio International. SIRIUS OutQ is a stream of news, information, and entertainment specifically for the Gay/Lesbian Bisexual/Transgender community. Sirius also has EWTN and The Word for religious programming and they recently announced an Eminem station and an All Elvis Channel.
The shuttle has a six-line display that shows the name of the channel (called stream in satellite terminology), the stream number, category, artist, song, title, and time. It has a large master control knob that allows you to look at other streams while listening to any stream. There are also 10 buttons for your favorite channels, a parental lock out feature, and a wireless remote control.
Sirius charges $12.95 a month for their service. In order to compete with XM radio, which charges $9.95 a month, they have recently added other payment options. You can now get the service for $9.99 a month with a 12-month prepaid subscription. There is also a $499.99 lifetime plan. One other recent change in the Siruis service allows subscribers to listen to the 60+ commercial-free music channels over the Internet. This is a big plus for many subscribers.
What’s not to like? The documentation was sparse. At first I didn’t understand how to hook up the home kit since I didn’t realize that you needed to provide a radio to hook up the shuttle. Duh – I felt kind of dumb, but shouldn’t the documentation have mentioned this clearly? Also, the first shuttle that I received didn’t work and had to be replaced. In defense of Sirius this was a unit that had already been used by several other reviewers, so it was not brand new. A replacement unit was sent immediately and the 24-7 Siruis customer service department was easy to reach, knowledgeable, and polite. As some of you may point out, however, they did know that I was a reviewer.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my satellite radio experience. The jazz streams were wonderfully relaxing. The news streams kept me up-to-date. The comedy stream was always there to cheer me up. The special broadcasts were always exciting. Yes, the monthly subscription fee is another bill, but if you love to listen to the radio, satellite radio may be worthwhile for you.
