This is a short article about my opinion of satellite radio since I bought it almost 5 years ago. These opinions are my own, and I’m sure others will differ. You can always have your own opinion if you just go out and buy a Sirius universal tuner and plug it into your car. Then you can make a decision on the matter.

I originally bought a cheap Sirius tuner because I was taking a 1200 mile trip about 3 times a year in a car. I was always running for long stretches where I ran into some dead zones. The relatively new satellite radio seemed like the perfect solution.

Once I started using this radio at home on a regular basis, I found that maybe I got lucky. I had perfectly good reception in my hometown, but when I drove to a heavily populated area about 15 miles north, I couldn’t get a clear signal. It appeared that all of the lower FM frequencies Sirius used were being used by local radio stations, causing them to leak to the satellite station. I haven’t given it much thought, but what are these people doing to correct their poor reception?

So here I am driving down the road listening to my music stations from the 70’s and 80’s where I come across an ad for XM radio and they are covering every major league baseball game for the upcoming season… I’m a addicted to baseball so I’m back online I go and buy an XM receiver. This turned out to be a good deal for a transplant like me, who has followed the White Sox since I was 7 years old. I can hear the hometown announcers announce all the games.

I found the XM receiver had the same problems as the Sirius tuner. Had poor reception in high traffic areas. Both cover similar topics in terms of music, talk shows from both the right and left, and weather and road conditions in some 50 cities across the country. The only difference is the sports programming. While XM has baseball, Sirius covers college and NFL football along with others I wasn’t as interested in.

I tried to cancel my subscription to each provider after the season was over, but had a hard time doing so. At first they kept my account open and gave me a month of free listening. By the third year, it was up to 4 months when the seasons overlapped.

I see that Sirius and Xm are going to merge. I don’t know how this will affect the programming or the cost of the subscription, but I figure I’ll still be able to do my 1200 mile trip 3 times a year and listen to my Sirius radio using that cheap Sirius. universal tuner i bought 5 years ago.