This just in—a hot anonymous tip, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s been discussed, in detail, that Sirius is having trouble with their home receivers due to their elliptically orbiting satellites. XM, however, has a set of geosynchronous sats. Therefore, Sirius needs a new satellite bad but that stuff costs money THEREFORE it seems the XM is edging forward in the race to the stars, Howard Stern be damned.
So, there are two ways out: spend a load of money on another satellite or suffer bravely as XM starts streaming data, devices updates, news, and other fat-pipe, ninja-tastic stuff through their superior sats. This also means that folks will be thinking twice before picking up a Sirius home unit and that can’t be good for anybody.
I personally enjoy both services, for different reasons. XM is great for the car, thus far, because I love their comedy offerings but in New York it’s hard to keep a clean signal. Sirius is programming some great music, including New Wave stuff that my wife just eats up, and we haven’t had many in-home issues, but it’s a stationary antenna aimed in just about the right place. Keep your eyes to the sky.
UPDATE after the jump
ANOTHER UPDATE…
Bugman offers a counterpoint.
Pure and unadulterated crap. Quite the opposite. XM’s satellites are at the equator, which means the further north one goes, the higher the angle to the XM satellite, and the harder to get their signal. That is why XM reception in rural areas in cars is problematic.. The reason you get good reception in NYC is because XM has hundreds of repeaters (read earthbound broadcast receivers) scattered around the country. Sirius always has at least 2 satellites overhead (directly overhead makes reception much easier.at any time. When launched (and they launched before XM, Sirius had the forsite to launch their spare satellite) In fact, with some repositioning Sirius could thrive on 2 satellites. XM had to launch a replacement satellite last month to replace one of their 2 failing satellites (solar panel fogging) if XM does not launch another satellite by 2007 their service will fail.
Who should we believe—unadulterated hearsay or Bugman? This New New Media stuff is hard.
UPDATE Hearsay man sends us this link to TheStreet.com. Bugman and Hearsay man will now have to fight it out on their own.
