WCRB/WKLB switch Dec 1?

[Brian Vita]

Garrett Wollman wrote:
> <<On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:59:18 -0500, "Bill O'Neill" <me@billoneill.us> said:
> My car, which I bought almost two years ago, came with a factory XM
> receiver.  I listened to XM a lot in the first year of ownership
> (particularly BBCWS on channel 131, and the "decades" channels 8 and
> 9).  I have listened to it relatively little this year (despite having
> paid $toomuch for the subscription extension).  Now that hockey season
> has begun, I found myself turning it on again for the first time in a
> few months.  I was absolutely blown away by how hideous the audio
> sounds -- not just on the BBC, which was always awful, but now on the
> music channels as well.
>
> -GAWollman
>   
I've had XM since about a month after they went on the air.  Aside from 
a period two years ago when they added a bunch of channels and the 
"voice" channels (ie CNN, FOX, ESPN, etc) got really bad, the audio 
quality has been, if any thing, getting better.  One of the things that 
XM does is dynamically change the bandwith on channels depending on 
their use.  That is to say, if you go to a hockey channel with no game 
being played, it will sound like a bad POTS line.  Of course, they 
usually have a loop running saying that the channel is not active at 
this time.

When they did their first expansion a while back, the codec on the news 
channel sounded really raspy with lots of artifacts.  I was one of a 
number of people who complained and it cleared up about a week later.

I believe that the radio's software has the ability to upgrade on the 
fly.  Could it be that you haven't had the radio on long enough to 
pickup the full upgrade?

As for the comparison of XM to Sirius, I haven't personally put them 
side by side.  The general feedback that I get from the field is that XM 
sounds better and is a bit robust.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am, at least on paper, a 
commercial XM dealer. That is to say that I can sell you XM service for 
your public place and have it properly licensed.  They've basically peed 
in that pool when they allowed WallMart to sell the radios at $35 less 
than my cost.  Business owners buy the radios and sneak them through 
with a personal account or buy them and activate them through XM as a 
commercial unit and Wallmart gets the residual.

Brian Vita