XM Versus Serius

Sirius has Howard Stern...but XM has Dr. Laura....tough call...but I'm going with Sirius

Stern isn't there yet...

XM is my choicem ( becuase I have it)

fuck, it looks like I forgot to make htis a poll. doh.

I've got Sirius and love it. Don't even listen to regular radio anymore.

I asked a lot of people this question also. Both have pretty much the same channel categories and stations, but I heard frequently that Sirius's play selections are better than XM's. Also that Sirius's satellites are in a better position directly overhead so you get less signal drops.

Both are great and offer commercial free music. Can't go wrong with either. Here are the nuances:

For XM:
-Much larger music inventory, over double the size of Sirius' based on official music licensing documents in their financial statements. Meaning XM's channels don't feature repeat songs nearly as often.

-Satellites are in orbit to be more condusive for portable reception, something Sirius techs are struggling with. XM also has 1,100 ground-based radio repeaters, which all units pick up, for when the satellites drop signal. Sirius does not, and recently applied with the FCC to triple their existing repeater count to solve many signal issues.

-Major League Baseball coverage, every game, all home town broadcasters.

-PGA Tour broadcasts

-NASCAR broadcasts

-Far superior hardware, a full generation ahead of Sirius', with walkmen, recordables (like a VCR), etc. Sirius not expected to catch up in tech for another 18 months.

-5M subscribers currently, expected to break-even in Q2/2006, guaranting stability from that point on.


For Sirius:
-Howard Stern coming 1/1/2006

-Martha Stewart channel coming Q1/2006

-Richard Simmons channel (for the GFY twink population, he's a MUST)

-Jimmy Buffett channel

-NFL Football, all games, with local broadcasters

-Majority of College football games, including the popular SEC

-2M subscribers currently, break-even point not expected until 2008 at current growth rate.


For me it came down to playlists and hardware, I have to have a walkman, and Sirius' lack of repeaters, combined with no Walkman for another year doomed them for me. But I've listened to both of them and in my opinion they're roughly equal, despite Sirius' smaller music library. Good luck.

XM - They will be profitable way before sirisuck

But it really comes down to the programming you want...both have the same shit except the specialty sports and shockjock shows(stern on sirisuck, opieanthony on xm)

Dayum, thanks for that explanation! Any other people have opinions?

Yep, it's all about Sirus

Sirius has the better music programming but it sounds just one step above AM radio quality wise. I don't get it. Why does satellite radio signal quality suck? It's digital after all, there shouldn't be those problems.

Sirius has an issue with their compression algorithms, what they use to compress, encode, and send the music data to the satellite. It results in a slightly lower quality sound than XM, but they're working on it and I expect it to be solved sometime next year.

As for sat rad sound quality in general, you need to understand that because the format is new, the recievers that are capable of playing Sirius and XM (the radios) are junk. Just now we're finally seeing high-end radios come to market in time for X-mas, with better materials, that improve the quality. As it is currently, it's equivalent to FM radio, which for me is fine. Luckily for more discerning audiophiles it only gets better from here as the equipment improves and the compression technique is refined.

just ordered the sirius tuner for my car, they have Shady45 - eminem's radio station. listened to it last weekend on a house boat, awesome hip hop station. Lots of new stuff with a mix of old school ganster rap.

sirius hands down

XM has two identical channels of urban hip-hop.

As I said originally, both are excellent. The clowns claiming one is better than the other are similar to "My Sega owns your Nintendo!!" kiddies, "rooting" for the one they bought to win....grow up.

Either that or they're shareholders, trying to "pump" their paticular stock to go up. Ignore it all and try both, go to any Best Buy and sample each of them for about an hour. You'll find one that stands out for your needs for sure.

Good answer on the compression issue Mako.

I have to disagree wholeheartedly about the programming. When it comes to R&B/Rap and electronic/Dance music Sirius kills XM. Absolutely kills them. They hired the best of the best to program and host their shows.

I don't know about the other stuff though. I've heard XM does beat Sirius for talk. But at the end of the day, isn't there enough talk on the FM & AM bands already?

i got sirius because of the NFL hometown broadcasts, but found that
1. they don't synch the radio broadcasts to the TV broadcasts (which isn't a hard thing to do) so you can't listen to your hometown radio broadcast while you watch the network/directTV feed...real bummer because that's the reason for having it there in the first place
2. they have a real issue with the terrestrial feed, i can't get it most places in my house, so i have to drag the antenna (running the extension cord through the hallways) all around the house and adjust it periodically in order to get the satellite signal.
i like it, but once the tech issues are resolved i'll like it a lot more...

1. Impossible to do. Think about it, you're beaming a signal to a bird 20,000 miles away in a geo-stationary orbit, then beaming it back down, 40,000 round trip miles. Even at the speed of light, it would take a fraction of a second to accomplish, and this data is nowhere close to that speed level. Sat radio will never be able to "sync" with real time events.

2. Definitely. Hence their request for 1,200 more ground-based radio repeaters to the FCC for 2006. It will help greatly, as XM already has installed that same system and signal dropouts fell dramatically.

I've heard that a little too, but to be honest XM has 4 "Electronica/Dance" channels, and when I compare the lineup to Sirius, it's close enough. I'm sure yourself, or A13RK can figure out the differences though, which is why you need to compare both services for sure.

You need to understand though that it's not some marketing, XM has double the music library that Sirius does. It's in Sirius annual financial statements, they have no problem admitting that they chose to put the money elsewhere rather than license as much as XM did. On many channels, XM's playlists are dramatically longer than Sirius', and it's noticeable. It's not just "talk channels" in which XM holds a discernable lead in quality.

But on the electronica content I've heard that previously from experts in the genre, and totally believe you to be correct.

definitely possible to do...since we're not talking milliseconds, we're talking about a 15-20 second lag in the radio broadcast.
before the signal is beamed up, the feed arrives at the Sirius studio where a board op (or more likely, automation) inserts the Sirius promos, IDs, etc into the feed before it's sent to the uplink. so if you just insert a 15 second (or whatever the lag turns out to be) delay inline before uplinking the signal, mission accomplished.
it's the same way that local radio (if they're on the ball) synchs the radio broadcast with the local TV broadcast - there's always a lag there too because the feeds are sent via different satellites (or sometimes by other means, in the case of radio) back to the local studios before being transmitted. radio just inserts a delay. it's a pain in the ass to do, but is definitely very doable.

lol holy shit it's 15 seconds?? With XM on baseball coverage it's only delayed by three seconds...jesus.

You're right, that's inexcusable.

lol...exactly.