Sirius & Rolls in bed

[Shawn Mamros]

>The entire satellite radio nonsense can be summed up in three words:  
>"VHS vs. Beta".  At some point one of them will win and the other  
>will wither.  The question is, when.

Why couldn't it end up like, say, CBS vs. NBC?  If both stay in
business long enough - and, with the programming choices and
subscriber bases of both growing at present, there's no reason
why they couldn't - then it becomes more likely that some
electronics manufacturer will build a universal receiver that
can pull in both (assuming one subscribes to both, of course)
or just one of the two, if the user subscribes to only one
(thus making it easier to switch if/when desired).  It's not
like you have two completely different physical form factors,
the way it was with the different videotape formats.

Now, HD-DVD vs. BluRay - there's your modern-day VHS vs. Beta.
(Though maybe a universal player is possible there, too - won't
happen right away, of course...)

-Shawn Mamros
E-mail to: mamros -at- mit dot edu