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Monday November 2, 2009
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It's obvious (to me, anyway) that online radio services such as Slacker and Pandora will kill satellite radio, but that's no reason for Sirius XM to stop plugging away. I mean, clearly the Yankees will win the World Series, but the Phillies are going to give it a shot anyway.
Sirius XM's latest attempt is the XM SkyDock. In an effort to get in with the hip young iPhone crowd, the satellite company has released an iPhone/iPod Touch dock that lets you listen to satellite radio in your car using your favorite player.
Sound good? Let's count the problems: It has an FM transmitter, which usually delivers poor sound. You can connect an auxiliary cord for better sound, but then it looks messy. The press picture doesn't show the required antenna attachment, another messy wire. You can't get Sirius content by itself; you need to subscribe to XM and get the "Best of Sirius" package as an add-on. It lists for $119.
Management at the merged Sirius XM hasn't been making it easy on its customers. It already offers an iPhone app for program streaming, but that one requires a premium subscription and doesn't include some of the most popular channels. The best alternative is still to download the free Pandora or Slacker apps and connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to your car radio with an inexpensive audio cable. Keep trying, Sirius XM!
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November 3, 2009 11:43 AM
Satellite radio is a fantastic resource for the car-bound. There's a tremendous variety of content--a dozen variations on each conventional radio format plus a half-dozen dedicated channels for humor and even a channel dedicated to the theater-of-the-mind, old radio programs like Gunsmoke and Dragnet.
Terrestrial radio stations fade out every 30 miles or so, a problem for travelers, it lacks the variety of satellite radio and favorite syndicated programming is located at different frequencies and different bands in different communities, when it is broadcast at all.
Internet radio programming is even more narrowly available than terrestrial radio. Only about a third of the miles of the interstate highway system have available wireless internet and, when it's available, the software and/or hardware for receiving wireless internet is intermittently capable of smoothly and seamlessly transferring connectivity from cell tower to cell tower. Oddly, that capability is weakest when transitioning from 3G reception to older technologies.