Portable satellite radio

[79TA7.6]

I have been trying to research satellite radios lately as in a few months when I graduate I will be traveling in a different direction for work. I currently travel east from my farm and I get good radio reception about 5 miles from my house all the way to work/school. I have a better job lined up in the opposite direction, same distance away. The issue is that when driving east I have one radio station that I listen to, I am a rock music listener, while heading west there is nothing that I will listen to, and some I won't even be able to understand.

During my research I have found that it seems Sirius and XM have joined, but are still under different stations? I am still not sure about that. Either way, I believe VW is using Sirius from what I gather reading on the club so I will likely go with Sirius in case I ever decide to get a newer car.

While researching I also found that they make portable satellite devices and I was thinking this might be good too. Where I live I do not get radio reception either. So when I was not using the unit in my car I could have it in the house playing. The part I am confused about on that is that some say you can listen with the portable device anywhere you have WIFI. Well that is pretty dumb. I have a limited 10GB of internet per month out here in the boonies. If I had unlimited I would just buy a subscription to Pandora or the like. Does anyone know if it actually uses your internet connection to stream the music? Does one need to buy anything extra to make it work otherwise, like another antenna? I assume these questions would depend of the type of device used.

I am mainly after the input of those who might be using a portable unit in your car and your house and how it is working for you. How are you hooked up to your car stereo? How are you hooked up to your home stereo?

 

[belome]

When you buy a unit they have a 'house kit' and a 'car kit' (most come with one or another, but you can purchase it separately) each comes with a way to power your unit and an antenna. You simply take the unit off the base it is on and then move it to the new base.

You do not need WIFI for a standard unit. Not sure if they have something like that for the small fancy portable ones or not, but I don't keep up on those.

I run a setup similar to this:
http://shop.siriusxm.com/xm/ctl10600/cp49759/si6424141/cl1/siriusxm_onyx_plus_with_home_kit

I don't use it in my house though, just in my commute.

As for the two merging, I think most of the music channels are the same but they each have different sports programming and other things. You can get Sirius with the Best of XM or vice versa and you will get all the content. I personally just have Sirius but have lots of friends that are XM only.

 

[79TA7.6]

Thanks for the info Belome. I have a awhile before needing to do anything so I will keep researching.

 

[romad]

I've been using a Delphi MyFi XM2Go since 2005. While no longer available new*, you can get units from eBay, Amazon, etc. It is a 3-way portable: auto, home, person. I use mine in both my Jetta and my Miata, plus I have extra antenna & mount for use in the Prius as needed (long trips). For the Jetta & Miata, I use PIE (Precision Interface Electronics) adapters for the head units (OEM & Pioneer respectively); for the Prius I just use an aux cable. PIE is out of business now but you may find similar adapters from Blitzsafe, GROM, enfig, etc. For the Jetta I used an adapter that provided power connection from the Monsoon hu to the MyFi along with an audio connection. I have a cradle connected to my A/V receiver at home; the MyFi doesn't have the WiFi connectivity that some current SiriusXM receivers have.

*Edit: You can still get new units via Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0006GFVPC/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

Some helpful links:

http://www.digitalradiocentral.com/forum.php

http://www.xm-radio-satellite.com/

http://www.myradiostore.com/

 

[IXLR8]

Sirius and XM merged a while ago, same stations just different channels. I bought a Sirius portable radio before they merged. I got both the Home kit and the car kit. For the car I bought a cassette adapter that plugged into the Sirius radio. The Sirius radio comes set up with a FM transmitter you need to tune your car radio to. But with all the traveling I do I found that often times the FM frequency I selected to receive the Sirius signal would already have a FM station on it and I would have to change the FM broadcast channel on the Sirius radio and the FM station on my car radio. It got to be a pain. Hopefully your car radio has a AUX in connection on it so you don't have to use the FM to pick up the Sirius radio signal. At home I used the 'Home' kit and just bought a cable to go from the home kit station to my receiver. Biggest issue was then finding a place in the house I could put the Sirius antenna where it would pick up the satellite signal.