Now you have to make sure your car has a radio (at least AM)?

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The sats already exist, so it seems the best plan would be to take subscribers until they malfunction. Kind of like a nuke plant, the expensive part is building it in the first place, and it's super cheap to operate afterwards.

Sirius and XM operated on different and noncompatible hardware when the two companies merged. After the merger the combined company switched all new customers to the XM hardware and the last Sirius hardware was sold way back in 2009. However, as part of the deal to approve the merger of the only two satellite radio companies into one was the requirement that the legacy service operate for 20 years.

Yes, the satellites exist and Sirius XM owns the spectrum they operate on. Those are valuable assets and it makes no sense to use them for a tiny and dwindling customer base of Sirius satellite radio customers. The spectrum alone is worth about $5 billion. Come 2027 it can be repurposed or sold.

[redpoint5]

I disliked sat radio from day 1 because the audio quality was junk, and that's coming from someone that's not exactly an audiophile. Musk says a technology needs to be at least 20% better than existing to overtake it. I preferred FM sound quality over the compression of sat, and HD radio surpassed that, so the 20% threshold was not met.

I'm looking forward to cars not having that stupid "shark fin" antenna. We'll probably invent a reason to keep it, like short range car to car telemetry or something.

[freebeard]

A year or two ago at the Father's Day VW show, there was a rat rod with a fin that ran the full length of the roof, 18-20" tall. Wish I'd had a camera, you be seeing it right now.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'm looking forward to cars not having that stupid "shark fin" antenna. We'll probably invent a reason to keep it, like short range car to car telemetry or something.

I'd bet, actually, I'm sure that those little "shark fin" antennas don't get as good as signal as a full sized antenna. But full sized monopole antennas aren't very aerodynamic.

AM antennas a lot of times use those little coils. A loop would be better for AM, but costs slightly more to make.

So now we have car companies that make cheap little antennas and then when customers complain that their audio is terrible they just get rid of the antennas altogether.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I disliked sat radio from day 1 because the audio quality was junk, and that's coming from someone that's not exactly an audiophile. Musk says a technology needs to be at least 20% better than existing to overtake it. I preferred FM sound quality over the compression of sat, and HD radio surpassed that, so the 20% threshold was not met.

I had Sirius sat radio back when I lived in Alabama and had a 180 and then 130 mile round trip commute which both took 3 hours. I didn't care about the quality of my news broadcast - I cared that I could listen to the same station for my entire commute. With FM I would run out of FM station range several times on the commute. Just start to get interested in a program and then .... static .... time to find something different.

Then there were the commercials. FM radio is 40% filler and commercials. That gets REALLY old if you are in a car 3 hours a day.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by JSH

I had Sirius sat radio back when I lived in Alabama and had a 180 and then 130 mile round trip commute which both took 3 hours. I didn't care about the quality of my news broadcast - I cared that I could listen to the same station for my entire commute. With FM I would run out of FM station range several times on the commute. Just start to get interested in a program and then .... static .... time to find something different.

Then there were the commercials. FM radio is 40% filler and commercials. That gets REALLY old if you are in a car 3 hours a day.

You might have been able to do drive that far and keep listening to the same station with an AM station. But then again Satelite would probably have better quality than AM.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

You might have been able to do drive that far and keep listening to the same station with an AM station. But then again Satelite would probably have better quality than AM.

Maybe but in my limited experience with AM radio there is nothing worth listening to. The last time I listened to AM was when I was out in Utah out of range of any FM stations and the only "news" was talking about how Obama was planning to mobilize the military to round up the "patriots" and put them in FEMA camps set up in empty Walmart stores.

And then there are the commercials

The satellite radio there is the option of more than 100 channels including real news.

[redpoint5]

I've only had a long commute 7 months out of my life when I was doing Salem to downtown portland. I was too poor to afford sat radio at that time, and I don't even know if it was a thing in the early 2000s.

I would often make trips between Vancouver and my parents place in Salem on the weekends though. Would have been nice to have audio books back then.

I somewhat recently "read" 1984 while traveling for work. I could be happy long haul truck driving.

[freebeard]

Longest commute for me was Ft. Lewis to Salem every other weekend. I had a 1958 VW convertible with an AM radio. It had a loose connection to the speaker so it cut out when the car hit a bump.

In additon to the signal received, there was another superimposed signal from the car 'playing' I-5 like a record groove.

[redpoint5]

I love when the radio picks up the engine RPM and plays it through the speakers. Like playing a video game in real life.