Satellite Radio
Dec. 14th, 2005 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sligachanSatellite radio seems to be popular all of a sudden. Since I was aware of the industry long before it was a available (I'm a space industry journalist, amongst various other careers), I was a very early adapter, and many people have asked me my advice. One of my best friends just did so. I thought I'd post a version of my response to forward to people who ask me in the future. So, if you want satellite radio, here are my entirely biased opinions!
------
Regarding satellite radio, the clear choice is Sirius, but the why takes a bit of explaining. First of all, on ideological grounds, Sirius was an entrepreneurial company that invented the idea. XM was backed by GM's infinite resources to crash the party when it looked likely that Sirius would succeed. So, if you have any affection for "the little guy," Sirius is (marginally) closer to that. [I should say up front that I own stock in both companies, but a lot more in Sirius, and I am also a customer of Sirius.]
If you listens to public radio, Sirius is your only real option. Since Sirius proposed the idea of Satellite Radio, and at first planned more niche programming than either service actually offers, they locked up the NPR and PRI contracts and XM is locked out (though they've tried to fake it by hiring ex-NPR employees to create their own station). Sirius offers a direct feed from both public networks.
Sirius also has the best technical solution. Their satellites are in Molnoiya orbits, which were invented by the Russians for military purposes, while XM's spacecraft are in geostationary orbit. The latter is cheaper and allows less complex equipment in your car, but it means the broadcasts come down at an angle. They can be blocked by buildings, mountains, or canyon walls. The further north you are, the greater the problem. To fix that, XM has installed lots of repeaters in urban areas, but if you do much traveling in the remote countryside, there could be areas of limited and broken coverage.
Molnoiya orbits are very close to Earth on the opposite side of the region you are targeting, and very high over (in this case) North America. By carefully spacing three satellites, one of them can always look more-or-less straight down into urban and rural canyons. Sirius needs far fewer ground transmitters and is likely to work better in rural areas. However, since the system must track three moving spacecraft instead of one fixed satellite, the car electronics are much more complex. Sirius ran into unexpected trouble making it all work together, were second to market, and have yet to fully recover. Another potential problem for Sirius is, while they do have a backup satellite, it is on the ground. If one of their satellites were to comprehensively fail with no warning (not a common occurrence but not unheard of), it would take time to get their backup into orbit and coverage could get spotty for that period of time.
Both signals can be briefly blocked by dense trees, power lines over the road, rural bridges and tunnels(obviously!), or very intense rain. I used to have noticeable problems with power lines, but that seems less noticeable now; maybe I'm just used to it. Also, when the radio ham next door was alive, I could not listen whenever he was using his equipment.
Both systems offer circa 150 stations, split roughly one-third talk with commercials and two-thirds commercial-free music. The talk gets less bandwidth, so when there is music on a talk station (e.g., NPR), the results can be relatively disappointing; I listen to Prairie Home Companion on the local broadcast! Disappointingly, both systems offer many tens of channels of the same crap you can get over local radio (e.g., a channel devoted completely to Elvis 24 x 7, or American Football, et cetera). That said, Sirius also has a channel of 24 x 7 BBC, a channel devoted to world radio stations (an hour each rotating between various country's shortwave broadcasts), three classical stations (pops, symphonic, voice, but alas they dropped their excellent chamber music station). They have circa five jazz stations, a blues station, and one devoted to musicals (though one friend can't stand listening to it because, instead of offering the entire musical, they play single songs). There used to be a folk music station, but the dropped that for a "coffee" house station. Nonetheless, my honest opinion is that Sirius' programming is a little better than XM's. While both networks’ lack of true niche programming is disappointing, as is the ongoing reduction in what little there is, I am still a mostly happy customer.
Best of all, so far, satellite radio is unregulated except for frequency use. The increasingly less subtle censorship found on broadcast radio is largely absent.
Regarding hardware, there are two routes. The more effective but more expensive is to get separate receivers and subscriptions (second subscriptions are discounted) for each site, i.e., home, car, and boat. The cheaper solution is to buy one receiver and one subscription, and move it between separate base stations attached to antennae at the three sites. It's been a long time since I bought our equipment, and things have undoubtedly changed, so you should go to a good audio or car electronics retailer and ask their advice for your particular situation.
Subscriptions are circa $13 a month. Sirius used to offer a $500 "lifetime" subscription good for the life of the radio (not your life!).
Satellite radio is going the same route as satellite TV. Is it everything it could be? No. Is it better than any of the alternatives? Probably, yes. Hope all that helps!
-- Donald
------
Regarding satellite radio, the clear choice is Sirius, but the why takes a bit of explaining. First of all, on ideological grounds, Sirius was an entrepreneurial company that invented the idea. XM was backed by GM's infinite resources to crash the party when it looked likely that Sirius would succeed. So, if you have any affection for "the little guy," Sirius is (marginally) closer to that. [I should say up front that I own stock in both companies, but a lot more in Sirius, and I am also a customer of Sirius.]
If you listens to public radio, Sirius is your only real option. Since Sirius proposed the idea of Satellite Radio, and at first planned more niche programming than either service actually offers, they locked up the NPR and PRI contracts and XM is locked out (though they've tried to fake it by hiring ex-NPR employees to create their own station). Sirius offers a direct feed from both public networks.
Sirius also has the best technical solution. Their satellites are in Molnoiya orbits, which were invented by the Russians for military purposes, while XM's spacecraft are in geostationary orbit. The latter is cheaper and allows less complex equipment in your car, but it means the broadcasts come down at an angle. They can be blocked by buildings, mountains, or canyon walls. The further north you are, the greater the problem. To fix that, XM has installed lots of repeaters in urban areas, but if you do much traveling in the remote countryside, there could be areas of limited and broken coverage.
Molnoiya orbits are very close to Earth on the opposite side of the region you are targeting, and very high over (in this case) North America. By carefully spacing three satellites, one of them can always look more-or-less straight down into urban and rural canyons. Sirius needs far fewer ground transmitters and is likely to work better in rural areas. However, since the system must track three moving spacecraft instead of one fixed satellite, the car electronics are much more complex. Sirius ran into unexpected trouble making it all work together, were second to market, and have yet to fully recover. Another potential problem for Sirius is, while they do have a backup satellite, it is on the ground. If one of their satellites were to comprehensively fail with no warning (not a common occurrence but not unheard of), it would take time to get their backup into orbit and coverage could get spotty for that period of time.
Both signals can be briefly blocked by dense trees, power lines over the road, rural bridges and tunnels(obviously!), or very intense rain. I used to have noticeable problems with power lines, but that seems less noticeable now; maybe I'm just used to it. Also, when the radio ham next door was alive, I could not listen whenever he was using his equipment.
Both systems offer circa 150 stations, split roughly one-third talk with commercials and two-thirds commercial-free music. The talk gets less bandwidth, so when there is music on a talk station (e.g., NPR), the results can be relatively disappointing; I listen to Prairie Home Companion on the local broadcast! Disappointingly, both systems offer many tens of channels of the same crap you can get over local radio (e.g., a channel devoted completely to Elvis 24 x 7, or American Football, et cetera). That said, Sirius also has a channel of 24 x 7 BBC, a channel devoted to world radio stations (an hour each rotating between various country's shortwave broadcasts), three classical stations (pops, symphonic, voice, but alas they dropped their excellent chamber music station). They have circa five jazz stations, a blues station, and one devoted to musicals (though one friend can't stand listening to it because, instead of offering the entire musical, they play single songs). There used to be a folk music station, but the dropped that for a "coffee" house station. Nonetheless, my honest opinion is that Sirius' programming is a little better than XM's. While both networks’ lack of true niche programming is disappointing, as is the ongoing reduction in what little there is, I am still a mostly happy customer.
Best of all, so far, satellite radio is unregulated except for frequency use. The increasingly less subtle censorship found on broadcast radio is largely absent.
Regarding hardware, there are two routes. The more effective but more expensive is to get separate receivers and subscriptions (second subscriptions are discounted) for each site, i.e., home, car, and boat. The cheaper solution is to buy one receiver and one subscription, and move it between separate base stations attached to antennae at the three sites. It's been a long time since I bought our equipment, and things have undoubtedly changed, so you should go to a good audio or car electronics retailer and ask their advice for your particular situation.
Subscriptions are circa $13 a month. Sirius used to offer a $500 "lifetime" subscription good for the life of the radio (not your life!).
Satellite radio is going the same route as satellite TV. Is it everything it could be? No. Is it better than any of the alternatives? Probably, yes. Hope all that helps!
-- Donald
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-17 10:21 pm (UTC)Hug