How does XM work ??

[Gary L]

I do hope you are wrong Heather and Bob but I think not!

For now at least, I do have some degree of selectivity in my music but I too fear it won't be long before both merge and sell out.

Commercial free music in a selectable format or jandra (Spelling) is the best a vintage audio freak could ask for.
I have 4 or 5 stations programed in and don't have to listen to all the garbage between songs. For this I am willing to pay the $10/month.

Ever notice how on what ever system you get your TV signal from you can't switch between any 3 stations and not hit a commercial break? We are paying more and more to be seduced by commercials and a show that is truely 25 minutes of content takes a full hour when the commercials are added.

I find more and more that me and my friends just buy DVDs and pass them around rather than to subject ourselves to the nightly onslaught of Bill Mays hawking nutty putty or every auto manufacturer shoving their junk down our throats so we need every pill known to man to be able to get through our miserable existance without Viagra.

Soon, if you are not hooked to some sort of direct connection there will be no such thing as over the airwaves except for the cell phones that can do everything from making a call to taking pictures and going on line to get your emails or text a message. Go out tomorrow and just try to by a cell phone that has large enough numbers for a senior to see and does absolutely nothing but make and answer calls.
I am not at all adverse to new technologies but I happen to believe if I want a phone that is just a phone or I want a station that plays nice jazz I ought to be able to find them without having to spin my vinyl or constantly be my own DJ flipping CDs.

XM was as close as I could get to what it was I wanted.

XM was a breath of fresh air for me but it won't last

Gary

[edgewound]

Its internet radio or satellite feed for any real selective listeners ... and frankly, once XM and Sirius merge, what's to keep them from going down the same road as every other "mass-market" broadcaster ...

I really hope I'm wrong about this ...

I hope you're all wrong too...I'd like to stay an optimist, because it's a great service with potentially billions of subscribers around the globe with on-line access.

With a merger, billions of dollars of cost redundancy should be eliminated. They can't really afford toalienate suscribers by having commercials of the music stations, but I could tolerate a block of programming having a sponsor for the hour and then uninterrupted music with a good host...sort of like PBS does with "Austin City Limits" etc.

We shall see....time will tell.

[SEAWOLF97]

Another thread question:

Another forum member in my area has XM and the same receiver..he comes over and asks "Why does yours sound so much better than mine ??".
Then we look at the signal strength bars and mine is to the max. He says he just puts the antenna on top of the system , where I stretched it out and set the antenna in a south facing window (as the manual prescribes) and went thru the tuning proc....
it is a "line of sight" antenna system.....I also went thru some experimenting to find the right spot on my truck to get best reception (but it still cuts out in tunnels like a cell phone )

Maybe this contributes to the different experiences ??

[johnaec]

We are paying more and more to be seduced by commercials...

We might be paying more and more, but commercials are totally wasted on me. I can think of only *one* thing in the last 5 years that a commercial has induced me to buy. Most people I know that are in the market for something do their research on the Internet. I dunno - maybe there *are* people out there that need to be told what they need. :dont-know

...we need every pill known to man to be able to get through our miserable existance without Viagra.

These I find especially annoying! This stuff in spam is bad enough - it's gotten to be like spam on TV... It seems like every other commercial I see is about "ED" - sheesh!

John

[Ducatista47]

We might be paying more and more, but commercials are totally wasted on me. I can think of only *one* thing in the last 5 years that a commercial has induced me to buy.
John

It is not very difficult to become immune to advertising. Where I work, it is desirable to work with documents - reproduce them, bind them, check them for quality - without reading a word of their contents. This skill is easily learned, and easily translated to commercials on tv. I can remember thousands of commercials, except I can't remember what any of them advertised. Because I never noticed that "detail." What brand of auto, razor, phone service, whatever. Works like a charm.

If I had much disposable income I would support the shows I like, buying the advertised products. Since I don't, I don't!

Clark