Sirius Skimped on Sats (?)
Victor Healey
filed under Wireless at ENGADGET
This just in—a hot anonymous tip, so take it with a grain of salt.
It's been discussed, in detail, that Sirius is having trouble with
their home receivers due to their elliptically orbiting satellites.
XM, however, has a set of geosynchronous sats. Therefore, Sirius needs
a new satellite bad but that stuff costs money THEREFORE it seems the
XM is edging forward in the race to the stars, Howard Stern be damned.
So, there are two ways out: spend a load of money on another satellite
or suffer bravely as XM starts streaming data, devices updates, news,
and other fat-pipe, ninja-tastic stuff through their superior sats.
This also means that folks will be thinking twice before picking up a
Sirius home unit and that can't be good for anybody.
I personally enjoy both services, for different reasons. XM is great
for the car, thus far, because I love their comedy offerings but in
New York it's hard to keep a clean signal. Sirius is programming some
great music, including New Wave stuff that my wife just eats up, and
we haven't had many in-home issues, but it's a stationary antenna
aimed in just about the right place. Keep your eyes to the sky.