XM or Sirius radio, anyone have it?

[Matt]

i'm getting bored of the music on my iPod and i think i'm getting too lazy to go out to find and download new music. FM radio sucks ass. on the radio, i've been pretty much listening to NPR and 1130AM.

does anyone have satellite radio? do you like it? is it worth the money?

[MikeMyers]

I have XM radio and like it. Its cool because they have a lot of talk radio both in sports and politics. I also think they have decent music stations. I guess Sirius has Howard Stern but I don't like the guy.

[Matt]

is it hard to navigate through all the channels? i mean the user interface, specifically. do you have a bunch of presets you use?

[MikeMyers]

It all depends on what kind of radio you have. I basically stick to a few channels because I'm too lazy to setup presets. I have a delphi roady but I've had it for over a year. I'm sure they have new models. Do you want this for the car or home?

[WTFchris]

i've used them when they come with a new car, but never used them enough to pay 10-15 bucks a month for it. I only spend a half hour each way to work in the car, and I like getting the road reports and sports updates on the way to work and back...so I wouldn't use it enough to merit the extra cost. If I was a salesman, truck driver or spent an hour or more on the road each way I would probably reconsider it though. It's cool, just not worth the cost for 35 minutes a day of listening.

I'd much rather put the money into Tivo, HD tv or something I would use more. but if you're in the car a lot it's worth it.

[Vinny]

We've got XM at the bar now and I love it. We used to have just regular radio when the jukebox wasn't going, and I would end up having to put like 10 bucks a night into the juke just to keep the mood going because there were so many commercials. No such problem with XM. Navigating's easy as far as I'm concerned, you can scroll up and down or just punch in the numbers like TV channells with the remote. I like that you can see the Artist/Song and that you can scroll through and see what's playing on other stations before you switch.

Everyone I know with Sirius loves it too so I don't know what to tell you about deciding between the two.

[Wizzle]

I have Sirius and I am never going back to regular radio. They will eventually have all of the major sports and every type of music you would need. There is a pre-set tuner so you don't have to flip through all the stations. I don't even listen to Stern, there is plenty of other stations to listen to.

[axemanozh]

I've had Sirius since '03, I love it and would recommend that. But honestly, music is music and I've heard good things about XM, too. You'd probably be best off making a decision on what extras you want beyond music. I don't know what XM offers besides MLB, but Sirius has great sports coverage (NFL and NBA) and lots of talk channels, too (not that I listen to those.) Internet access also comes with your subscription, it's only a 30-something kbps stream - although I've never had issues with it - but they also offer the option to pay a bit and upgrade to a 128 kbps stream. I paid for a lifetime subscription way back when, so I don't know what they're charging per month these days. I have an older Kenwood model unit in my car (it is from '03 after all) but it still works great, you can preset your favorite channels, and you still have access to AM/FM if for some reason you wanted to listen to those. I'm not familiar with the plug and play units, but I do know not to hook them up through a modulator if you get one of those, my friend did it that way and it sounded terrible - get a Sirius ready unit or plug it through an aux port.