Fun Toy

On friday, my pop came down to visit with us and delivered my belated birthday gift: Audiovox Sirius Radio! I've been playing with it for the last couple of days, and I'm really happy with it. The receiver unit is tiny, about the size of a recipe notecard. It docks into either a home kit, or a car kit, depending on where you are. Each kit has connections for the satellite antenna and power. That way, when going from one place to the other, you don't have to reconnect all sorts of stuff.

I was really happy when I discovered that I could get excellent reception from office. There is a north-facing window one cube back from mine. I wasn't sure what kind of reception I would get. With XM, the satellites are in geostationary orbit in the south. With Sirius, the satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, and they oscillate north and south. After some experimenting this morning, I'm receiving about 70% signal strength from a north-facing window. In the car, I have excellent reception all the time.

The music is transferred in a stream format. The receive creates a buffer of the music, a little over one second in length. When I drive under an overpass, the receiver plays from the buffer. The stream must have some redundancy. Even when the antenna is covered for a second, there is no noticeable hiccup in signal. The signal did cut out when I drove up to the ATM, but that was to be expected. At our home, I couldn't find a window with a good view to get great reception, but I still had enough to listen. I'm going to keep the docks in my car and at work, though, so it shouldn't matter.

To sum up, I'm very happy with the Sirius Radio. It is a total luxury, as I could be listening to radio over the air for free. I still hear the DJs chime in from time to time, but there are absolutely no commercials. The variety of music, talk, news, and comedy available is great too. Now I can listen to my electronic music as much as I like, wherever I like!