Mon 28 Jan 2008
XM Radio Is Rubbish
Posted by RichSlick under Cascading Expenses
[2] Comments
Our two new Toyota vehicles came with satellite equipment and complimentary service to XM Radio for a brief period of time. I was excited to have such a wide variety of choices and sorely disappointment when I heard was the unmistakable sound of “commercials” on my satellite channels.
For some reason, I was under the impression that XM Radio was commercial free. After all, why would anyone want to pay to hear commercials on a paid service? I simply don’t get it.
I’ll let the free trial period run its course and let it expire. It is a near certainty that this company doesn’t have long to live because it occurred to me that I could setup my new vehicles with so many alternatives. I have an auxiliary port for my iPod which I’ll likely use. If I can enable my vehicles with WiFi internet somehow, I could install a Mac-Mini and perhaps stream audio from the internet for free so why bother with satellite service?
XM, you have two choices, offer the service for free with commercials or take the commercials off if you want my business.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I just typed a long post about why XM works for me and forgot to hit the spam protection! Ugh!
Anyway, for me, I am willing to put up with the very limited commercials (as compared to the same programming elsewhere) to ensure that I can listen to all 162 games of my beloved NY Mets (plus playoffs….but, we all know about collapses in that regard!).
The music channels tend to be commercial-free, but the talk channels will have commercials. They have to have commercials – they use the same feed as they use for terrestrial programming (i.e. CNN, ESPN, Weather Channel, etc.).
When traveling, I also find the traffic information invaluable. I don’t have to search for the local AM station and figure out what time they do their traffic report. Again, whatever the subscription cost – it has saved me a couple of times just in good traffic reports.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
It *might* be worth it for me if I could listen online (via web) during work but then again I can listen to iTunes broadcasts (and others) for free (without commercials) online now so is it really worth the price?
I do love that I can get CNBC and other news programming to keep me abreast of market, political and business developments but I can achieve that through things like SlingBox as well so I just don’t get the appeal of it.
Perhaps that is why Sirius and XM merger rumours have been running amok…..