Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Satellite Radio

My rental car that I took to Birmingham this week had satellite radio in it. My first real experience with it.
It was ok. I did enjoy the clarity of it and the fact that even though I was in the car for 4 hours and traveled a couple hundred hours, my stations stayed the same the whole time.
What surprised me, was that I ended up changing stations a lot more than I thought I would. Sure, it's commercial free, but all the stations played a lot of crappy songs. And there is no station that plays all current music. The "top 40" station is like, top 40 of all time, and there is just no good transition from Fall Out Boy to Debbie Gibson. Also, its not really commercial free. Yeah, there are no commercials for businesses, but there are plenty of advertisements for the other satellite channels and for the specialty shows that are on them. Maybe I'm just too picky about my music, I just found myself changing channels possibly more than I do with regular radio.
I did enjoy ESPN Radio, but I don't need Sirius for that, it's nationally syndicated most places and I listen on the Internet as well.
I really enjoy listening to comedy while I drive, so I was looking forward to the comedy channels. But alas, it's comedy bits and about the time I get used to one comic, they change right out to another. I guess I don't like my comic to change so often.
All in all, it was ok, and if you were in your car a lot, I could justify the cost. Only being in my car 30 minutes a day, I just don't think its worth it to me.
I do recommend Napster though. Worth every penny if you listen to music much on your computer. I'd go crazy at work most days without it.