Sirius & Rolls in bed

[Larry Weil]

At 05:41 PM 1/11/2006, Shawn Mamros wrote:
> >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.

That is not likely to happen anytime soon.  The chips used to decode 
the programming are proprietary and largely subsidized by the system 
it is meant to receive.  There is no way Sirius is gonna subsidize a 
receiver that gets XM, or the other way around.  Likewise, you are 
not likely to ever see a receiver that gets both DirecTV and Dish Network.


Larry Weil
Lake Wobegone, NH