Serious Radio
The highlight of our road trip to San Fran this past weekend was definitely the Sirius Satellite Radio that I bought myself for Christmas the previous weekend. As of right now, it ranks in the top 10 purchases I’ve made in the past 5 years (for those that care, #1 was the washer and dryer). I love my Sirius radio.
First, the music stations are better than I expected. I never knew that radio could be so cool! The multitudinous formats are just phenomenal. You hop from the 80’s to the 70’s to today to old school rap. You know you’re going to find a song that you like. The only question is, “How long do you stick with that station before you turn?” Usually you wait until a song you don’t like, which usually takes 3 or 4 songs. But sometimes, a decent song is playing and you just know there’s something better elsewhere so you flip around. On the regular radio, if you find something even listenable, there’s no way you flip.
Next, is the commercials. The lack of commercials is like a little gift from God. The regular radio is almost intolerable with the length of the commercial breaks. I can’t even begin to imagine what listening to Howard will be like when the commercial break is less than 15 minutes long. Even without all the other stuff, no commercials makes it all worth while.
Of course, one of the things I love is the NFL Station. A station dedicated to the NFL: how can that be anything but great? I don’t listen to it as much as I would if I didn’t car pool with Jenn, but what I do listen to, I like. Good times!
Lastly, the main reason why I got Sirius was the impending arrival of Howard Stern. Every once and a while, I stop over and listen to the Howard Stern news. It’s actually kind of funny that he programs news about the Stern Universe. Because there are so many different personalities on the show, and if you listen to the show, you know each one of, it actually works. It’d be like someone making a radio show about you and your friends and you get to find out shit about your friends that you never knew or you get to find out what they do when they’re not hanging out with you or e-mailing you pictures of naked grannies peeing. Once the radio show moves over, I’m sure it’s going to be spectacular. It might lead to Jenn not wanting to car pool any more. But at least it will be funny.
There are some things which are annoying. Even a little interference (like driving under an over-pass) will interrupt reception if even for just a split second. Reception with the home kit is crap if the antenna isn’t outside and even then it can be spotty (that might just be a problem with where we live). You have to learn a new remote and learn it while driving, which isn’t necessarily the best of ideas. Also, Sirius doesn’t have a radio that you can walk around with, like XM has. I was really disappointed about that. Their version is like an MP3 player where you can record stuff for playing while you walk around later. If our i-Pod didn’t have hard drive problems early on, that last fact probably would have been enough to make me decide to just get my own i-Pod.
On the whole, though, Sirius is well worth it. It really make driving a much happier experience. The selection of programming is just too good to be ignored. I'll probalby never even turn to 70% of the channels and I bet many of those would have programming that I'd listen to. Now if I could only get Jenn to agree to a cross-country trip to really test this baby out.
First, the music stations are better than I expected. I never knew that radio could be so cool! The multitudinous formats are just phenomenal. You hop from the 80’s to the 70’s to today to old school rap. You know you’re going to find a song that you like. The only question is, “How long do you stick with that station before you turn?” Usually you wait until a song you don’t like, which usually takes 3 or 4 songs. But sometimes, a decent song is playing and you just know there’s something better elsewhere so you flip around. On the regular radio, if you find something even listenable, there’s no way you flip.
Next, is the commercials. The lack of commercials is like a little gift from God. The regular radio is almost intolerable with the length of the commercial breaks. I can’t even begin to imagine what listening to Howard will be like when the commercial break is less than 15 minutes long. Even without all the other stuff, no commercials makes it all worth while.
Of course, one of the things I love is the NFL Station. A station dedicated to the NFL: how can that be anything but great? I don’t listen to it as much as I would if I didn’t car pool with Jenn, but what I do listen to, I like. Good times!
Lastly, the main reason why I got Sirius was the impending arrival of Howard Stern. Every once and a while, I stop over and listen to the Howard Stern news. It’s actually kind of funny that he programs news about the Stern Universe. Because there are so many different personalities on the show, and if you listen to the show, you know each one of, it actually works. It’d be like someone making a radio show about you and your friends and you get to find out shit about your friends that you never knew or you get to find out what they do when they’re not hanging out with you or e-mailing you pictures of naked grannies peeing. Once the radio show moves over, I’m sure it’s going to be spectacular. It might lead to Jenn not wanting to car pool any more. But at least it will be funny.
There are some things which are annoying. Even a little interference (like driving under an over-pass) will interrupt reception if even for just a split second. Reception with the home kit is crap if the antenna isn’t outside and even then it can be spotty (that might just be a problem with where we live). You have to learn a new remote and learn it while driving, which isn’t necessarily the best of ideas. Also, Sirius doesn’t have a radio that you can walk around with, like XM has. I was really disappointed about that. Their version is like an MP3 player where you can record stuff for playing while you walk around later. If our i-Pod didn’t have hard drive problems early on, that last fact probably would have been enough to make me decide to just get my own i-Pod.
On the whole, though, Sirius is well worth it. It really make driving a much happier experience. The selection of programming is just too good to be ignored. I'll probalby never even turn to 70% of the channels and I bet many of those would have programming that I'd listen to. Now if I could only get Jenn to agree to a cross-country trip to really test this baby out.
posted by RauluaP at 12:34 PM
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