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XM Radio?!?!

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bbud on 13/06/2008 - 17:10

My brother bought a car stereo headunit from US the other day, due to the awesome aussie dollar… and i was wondering what XM satellite radio is (the headunit said it has XM radio functionality)? i had a look at wikipedia and from vague prior knowledge that it’s some sort of subscription based radio (sort of like cable TV…but radio..).. it’s supposed to be like high-definition radio or something…

was wondering if anyone has been to the USA/Canada or know about it? is it good? i mean, it sounds pretty absurd to me that you pay just say 10 bucks a month to listen to some “high-def” radio… or is there something more to it? and also, is australia going to get it? or is it just AM and FM for us?!

Comments

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mawinmawin on 13/06/2008 - 18:39

http://www.xmradio.com/whatisxm/index.xmc

It is a private national radio in USA. Satellite based digital radio, covering entire USA on road/internet/everywhere.

Wish we too get here as i lose the coverage of my favorite radio stations on weekend drives.

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neil on 14/06/2008 - 21:46

Its great. Most of the stations are commercial free. There’s about 100 or so stations.

They cover most sports so no matter where you are in the country you can hear your team play. It’s basically the Foxtel of radio.

Australia doesn’t have the market for it so I doubt you will ever see it here.

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ozpete on 28/06/2008 - 00:59

As it’s satellite based to cover North America the satellites are not positioned to enable us to receive any transmissions

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Crownie on 28/06/2008 - 01:56

The system is awesome. XM includes some of the biggest names in US radio such as Howard Stern. Major sports are either on XM or rival service Sirius.

When I was in the States 2 years ago I almost bought a portable XM radio receiver. You had a Hard Drive receiver that you could record the XM signal. Was going to record 30+ hours of Howard Stern and bring it back to OZ. The service will never take off here.

Just like Tivo. It’s huge over there but it will never work here. We have too few local networks and pay TV is Foxtel’s monopoly. Foxtel IQ is an excellent product that works due to a large channel base.