http://gizmodo.com/5066212/sirius-xm...-15-years-away

 

A friend of mine this weekend was shocked when he heard that I was off of Sirius and on to XM... I had to explain that XM came with the car, that I gave up on the Sportsters, and that I now enjoy XM as much as I did Sirius.
I listened to Stern a lot and that's the only thing I really miss about Sirius... okay, that and football.

So, he tells me that there's supposed to be a new package for XM, called "The Best of Both" which is supposed to be XM with Stern included.
It's supposed to be something like $20 a month!

Now, I read this and don't know what to believe.

 

Best of Sirius is 5 channels, 3 of which are stern.

 

You can get the "Best of Sirius" package right now for ~4 bucks more per month. That gets you Howard Stern, the NFL, and a couple other talk stations. No music, though...which kinda sucks. I miss a couple of the music stations whose similar channels on XM aren't as good.

 

I have Sirius in my G and I kind of wish I would have gone with XM. Sure the NFL coverage is sweet, but I think the music on XM is slightly better.

 

@cpnichols: I think 15 years is a bit unrealistic...if you read the whole interview, that quote was taken a bit out of context.a 3-5 years however is about normal lead time for changes like this in the OEM market.

@AesonVirus: Check out this link for info on the best of Sirius. You can get Stern and the NFL back.

 

I've was one of the first 20,000 subscribers to Sirius and was delighted when Stern decided to go with them instead of XM. A few months back my car was in the dealer shop for a few days and I got a loaner that had XM. In all honesty I like many of the music channels better on XM. The genres like 80's and 90's are far better on XM. You can't go wrong with either of them now as the premium channels are available on both. It would be nice if we could start ordering a la carte music channels.

 

See...I'm the opposite. I like the 90's channels on Sirius more. And Faction and Octane are far better for current music. It does come down to a personal preference though, and everyone will be a little different.

Since we will never be able to select ala-carte channels from our current radios, I'm not even getting my hopes up. I'm still interested to see how they do that though. As of now the 50 channel option does not offer any Sirius channels, and the 100 channel option only lists the "Best Of" channels. If the current ones they offer in the "Best Of" packages are the only ones they offer in the ala-carte packages, there are going to be lots of disappointed people.

 

Faction is probably the station I miss the most from Sirius. XM doesn't really have an equivalent that I've found.

 

I think the only reason I don't like The Pulse is because they tend to play more of "todays music" instead of alot of the early 90's top 40 hits. Another thing XM has much better reception in the Washington, DC area do to all the repeaters. Doesn't matter though, I have Sirius and I'm keeping Sirius. Hopefully by the time I make my next car purchase it'll have new hardware for both. I won't hold my breath.

 

The Pulse and Lithium are both good, but I find it depends on what time of day you listen to them. Lithium tends to play a lot of the early 90's grunge rock in the morning, but the rest of the day is kind of meh... And The Pulse plays enough good songs that I tend to check it through out the day to see what's playing.

Odd that you have reception issues in DC. Sirius is usually better in the northern US due to sat positions, and both have repeaters in the area, so who knows.

 

I liked the music better on Sirius as well... but I gave up... To be honest for music on the "radio" I take my windows mobile phone, plug it into the aux port in the car, and use Resco Radio, and tune in to any music station on the internet. Many of the Somafm.com stations work for me. With EVDO and most of the stations at 128mp3 or 64aacplus, the quality of the audio is better then XM or Sirius. The only thing I really am using the XM for now is traffic, news, and maybe some comedy every now and then. I have WAY to many options for music right now in the car... CD, data CD, radio, sat, CF card, ipod, aux port... it is a bit crazy.