ARE THEY SiRIUS??

Satellite radio is like cable TV. It was never free. You can have free AM/FM or free rabbit ear TV but all the good stuff's gonna cost ya'.

I've had XM for almost 10 years and as a "Road Warrior" couldn't live without it. I retire at the end of this month and do not think I will have any more use for it.

I have a jack for my iPhone in the Caddy as well as the F150 so it's all good.
 
About six years ago, my daughter gave me a Sirius receiver for Xmas. Therefore I had no choice except to get it hooked up. We are now on our second truck in which it has been installed. The "new" truck has three years on her and I still don't know how to set the radio. The wheels roll and the Sirius is on. I do the six month automatic contract because the less I have to jack with the happier I am. Someday, if I don't expire first, I may sync the phone that is smarter than I am to the trucks audio system. Or not..

hardcase60
 
Bought a new minivan in August of 2012, and had a year of Sirius included. We were going out east for the month of September and I thought it would great for the trip. The sound system is so lousy, and the road noise is so bad the radio was useless. Drove our older minivan with well over 100K miles (wife normally drives it, just around town) and was amazed at how much better the ride, road noise, and sound system were. Have been receiving mail and phone offers to renew Sirius, but told them I wouldn't bother with it if it was 50 cents a year.
 
My new 2013 car came with Sirius. I also have a portable XM receiver that I can use in my home, or take out to my garage when I'm working there, or -- and this is really cool -- slip into an armband holster and wear when I'm riding my motorcycle. I have earplugs with speakers installed that I wear under my helmet, and this lets me listen to my favorite stations while riding.

Like some others on here, I love satellite radio...had it for years, and it's definitely worth the cost to me. :)
 
If paying for radio doesn't make sense, Hillbilly, I got one better than that... I pay to listen to my own music! :D

The only paid service that I use is iTunes Match. For those who may not be familiar with it.... iTunes Match scans your iTunes library and matches it with Apple's music library. You can then stream all your music, including playlists, from Apple's library to your IOS devices or Apple TV. I have a collection of about 10k songs. I think the limit is 15 or 20k. The service is $25/yr and included is ad free streaming with Apple's new "Radio" service which is similar to Pandora.

Another benefit is that any music you downloaded to your PC years ago in low crummy bitrate like from Napster is also matched. In addition to streaming, you can chose to download any song in 256 bitrate from Apple's library and replace your old low bitrate mp3 files.

I actually use iTunes Match more at home than anywhere else. With Apple TV and my home stero system, I have access to my music library without having to fumble through over 700 CDs to find what I want to listen to. Funny... but the music files thousands of miles away are more convienient for me to listen to than the CDs in the next room.
 
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wee hooker@ I had the same experience with my renewal. Used to be you could cajole a much lower cost than advertised but rep said that's it. take it or leave it. I left it. Got 2 Country stations here in Vegas & every CD the George Strait has recorded. I'm happy!!
\

BW
 
They gotta charge so much because they have to pay Howard Stern his $400 million contract.

We have it kinda nice as I like Radio Classics and NASCAR they are the only background noise I have on. I like the portable because you can move it around but we do have it in the truck cause it's built into the radio, we canceled XM it in the GM truck but same company now I think. Thing That irkes me is they charge you full price for added radios. Heck DTV only charges $5 extra for additional receivers.
 
Our family has gone 100% subscription/ala carte for music, TV, movies, and radio.

We dumped Cox cable except for internet.

With a four year old son, and our low tolerance to be what I call "revenued on" by commercials we want to watch what we want and when without commercials. For these reasons subscribing to music and getting programming ala carte is perfect for us.

As for my four year old, I don't want him exposed to commercials, and I cannot control the content of TV or the timing without ala carte from iTunes or Netflix. This way we have complete control over what and when our boy watches.

Music/radio:
-Pandora-subscribed, we find all kinds of new music to listen to. Foreign, classical, rock by band or genre, we love it.

-iTunes, I put all of our CD's onto my Mac, and can stream it to any device via iTunes Matching and iCloud. Let me tell you, it's pretty cool to listen to your own catalog in a hotel two thousand miles away, your entire catalog.

-Radio: We either listen to NPR on an NPR player on our phones plugged into speakers, or I listen to radio stations on their websites streamed into speakers. There is no radio in the house, but I can listen to a rock station in Berlin, Germany or talk radio out of London, GB. Pretty cool.

TV/movies:
-Netflix: out go-to screen source. They have excellent original programming (House of Cards, Orange is the New Black) as well as a very good selection of TV shows and movies.

-Apple TV: If we just can't wait for it to show up on Netflix we rent or buy TV seasons. We are Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy addicts so we get these seasons right away.

-Buy movies: I go to a used music store that is huge, Zia Records, in Tempe, AZ. Tons of used movies and CD's used for smokin' prices.
 
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That's interesting because we don't use conventional over the air radios for entertainment in our home either. In addition to AppleTV which streams about everything from talk to music, we use Grace radio for tabletop radio in bedrooms and baths. I can't say enough good things about Grace radio. It does it all. For travel (though it stays busy in the kitchen) we have a new addition...wife loves it.



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I had XM from 2005 until early this year. My son got it when he graduated from college and added me as a Father's Day gift. It was great when we got it because there were several Country Music stations, 50s, 60s. 70s, baseball, and other good stuff to listen to.

When the merged with Sirius, they started to decontent all of the stations. The $500 Million Stern contract was killing them, so they cut everywhere else they could. First, the included Internet streaming was replaced with a $3.00/month fee. Then they started to "merge" channels, which sort of made sense since it reduced duplication. Then, they changed their play lists to have more second rate and unknown talent since the royalty costs are lower and in some cases no cost. The play lists also became shorter, so you heard the same songs over and over again.

After that, they started to put ads on some of the stations. I think Blue Collar Comedy was one of the first. In essence the people who run Blue Collar Comedy rent space on the transponder and do their own programming and ads.

And of course they jacked up the subscription prices along with deleting content. So, my son got fed up and called to cancel. They offered him all sorts of deals to stay, but each one had some sort of add on fee that eliminated the savings they offered him. The last straw was when they told him they'd offer him a good deal with no activation, IF he bought a new receiver for his car. Which he didn't need.

I don't miss it, really as I discovered "I Heart Radio" and can pick what I want to listen to when I wan to listen.
 
I finally got rid of Sirius when I retired in May, just wasn't worth the cost of service to me. I had XM, which I prefer, years ago. My new truck has Sirius. They did away with the free on line streaming, jacked up the price, as somebody observed so they could pay that tool Howard Stern obscene money, and I wouldn't listen to him if he was the only thing on. I just wasn't that impressed with the whole satellite radio programing anymore, seems like with all the stations they have, whatever genre you pick they are repeating the same songs endlessly. I swear on the stations I was listening to, I could predict the playlist. I just plug my IPOD into my truck radio now and jam to that, I've got enough tunes on that. I can spend the $14.99 monthly on ammo. I've gotten innumerable offers for free reactivation and 6 months for $25, but to tell the truth, I just don't miss it. JMHO...
 
I hear ya about XM/Sirious.

We just had that conversation on our road trip to Moab, 16 hours on the road round trip!

Many places had no cell coverage (no streaming) and no radio stations either, pretty isolated places out here in the west, which is a blessing but can at times be a little annoying.

We did hear a lot of repeats on Sirious, and we started to talk about dropping it as we have two receivers.

I don't think we've made up our minds yet, but we both just upgraded to 64G iPhones, so the next road trip we will have 128G's of capacity available. Should last us I think!!
 
As bad as the local "free" radio is here in small town South Dakota, the $$ for my XM radio is well worth it. The best part is on road trips, I don't have to jack with anything to find a good station. It works everywhere I go.

P.S. A bonus is there is more content than I can even use. It has something for everyone!!
 
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