Andy Levy wrote:
>
> I'm not even sure the stereo receives FM and AM :)
Oh, right, you replaced the whole head unit. We got one of the portable
ones. Once we managed to get the wires tucked out of the way it's not
too bad. I kind of thought we might be able to move it back and forth
from one truck to the other, but Norah's not letting it go :-). I'll
have to get a second one if I want to use it in the other truck. If I
were going to spend the money, I'd probably upgrade the head unit to
something that'll play MP3 CDs as well.
> Stern's getting better every day,
I'm glad you enjoy the show. I tried to listen to him a few times, but
couldn't ever understand the appeal. To each their own. Canadian radio
isn't heavily censored to begin with, so he seemed to have been met with
a collective yawn on this side of the border. No controversy at all,
just nobody interested. <shrug>
> the music, comedy and talk channels so far are
> great too.
We've mostly been on the music channels, but we did listen to the comedy
channels for a while on the trip. Those are pretty good. And XM has an
old-time radio channel where they broadcast the old drama serials from
the pre-TV days. That's pretty cool, the only thing is you have to try
to catch it from the start if you want to know what's going on. I'm not
terribly interested in talk, IMHO one of the best features is that
there's a minimum of talking over the music.
> My only real issue is that I've had a couple instances of dropped
> signal for 5-15 seconds. I think this is more due to my poor antenna
> placement than a deficiency of the system itself.
The only dropouts we've had were due to being under a bridge or something.
> It could be the programming - both XM and Sirius have exclusive
> programming. XM has a lock on MLB, while Sirius has the NFL all to
> itself, for example. Also, XM uses geostationary satellites, while
> Sirius's birds are in a very odd orbit that results in the very
> occasional signal drop.
No idea. My dad didn't know either, he just listened to the XM in
someone else's plane and made a beeline to the store to get the exact
same thing.
> That display can be dangerous. Scrolling stock ticker when you're on
> the financial news channel, for example.
I don't play that game, so I don't know what I'm missing out on I guess.
All I know is that Norah has an all new list of songs to download.
> My father's still trying to get Sirius hooked up w/ his Ram. With its
> primary use being cross-country RVing, they'll get heavy use out of
> it. Getting it hooked up w/ his RB1 isn't as easy/cheap as it may
> seem, and the dealer wants a ridiculous amount of money to do it (and
> they want to drill through his roof!).
It's too bad that there aren't easier kits available to add these on to
factory radios. I thought about replacing the head unit in our 2001,
but I kinda don't want to lose the steering wheel audio controls, and
the Mopar Sirius head unit is way too expensive for my taste.
> One thing to be aware of (but it doesn't affect you as you're on XM)
> is Sirius isn't allowed to offer certain programming (Stern) to
> Canadian customers. So subscribers are having to give Sirius a fake
> south of the border address to get the full programming.
That's interesting. XM apparently assigns the radio serial numbers to
one country or the other. Since this was a US radio, I had to sign up
with my parent's Utah address. As far as I can tell from the US and
Canadian web sites for XM, the programming is the same on both sides of
the border. We do get quite a bit of Canadian stuff on the US radio.
There's one comedy channel that's all Canadian, and a music station that
seems to be all Canadian as well. I assumed XM's solution to the CRTC's
ridiculous rule was just to add Canadian content clear across the board.
-- Jason Bleazard http://drazaelb.blogspot.com Burlington, Ontario his: '95 Dakota Sport 4x4, 3.9 V6, 5spd, Reg. Cab, white hers: '01 Dakota Sport 4x4, 4.7 V8, Auto, Quad Cab, black
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 01 2006 - 20:27:16 EST