My latest Jim-O-Gram:

To: [email protected], [email protected]

Subject: XM's direction?

Mr. Titlebaum, Ms. Hanson,

A few weeks ago I ordered an XM Direct along with a Timetrax USB interface as, last I looked, the XM PCR was discontinued. It arrived Thursday and today I put the antenna out on my deck and went through the motions of testing the demo channel with TimeTrax. I found the activation page for XM.

Along the way, I became curious about the progress of a few side projects like OpenXM, but what I found were broken links to pages I found through Google or on Sourceforge.

Than I found this: http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?t=33007
(Your names and e-mail addresses were included there as you can see.)

The ID of my new XM receiver is 3CW440W2. I did not activate it today.

What I need to see from XM Radio is a clear retraction of any public statements or legal movements you have made that would limit my ability to listen to XM when and how I want and to be able to do so with whatever software best fits my needs.

I have pulled the antenna in off the deck and I will keep the XM receiver for 3 months. After that, if you see that ID activated without having publicly changed course, it is because I sold it on eBay.

The funny thing is, I am smart enough to move forward and make my own "good enough" software to do what I want to do, but I'll be damned if I am going to give XM 10 bucks a month if XM is going to behave in the fashion you seem to be at present.

Please let me know if I am not being fair on matters of fact.

Best regards,

Jim

You may want to consider Sirrus. They as part of the normal service grant you access to all the stations as internet streams, thus standard internet radio recording programs should allow you to save and time shift.

Sirius does offer free internet streaming, but it is ONLY for their music channels plus the in house produced, OUTQ, the gay themed channel. Also the bandwidth of the internet feed isn't all that great. But you can get a free 3-day trail of the internet feed and see for yourself if it works for you.

Peter
Miami, FL USA

Tried XM and the "other" in NYC at DigitalLife... Less musical selection than I have on my own players, quality obviously no better (if not worse), navigation and interface extremely sub-par on a first-impression basis, it's "radio" and you have to pay monthly for it. Yuck. If I don't want to have a choice about what I'm listening to there are hundreds of free internet streams around (for when I'm not mobile). I just hope the focus of digital radio doesn't (continue to) de-rail other forms of mobile digital audio with built-in storage.

Bruno

I'm considering getting XM this holiday season. It looks like some of their new products offer Tivo -like features with a new portable having upto 5 hours of recording time. That product is too expensive, but I'm hoping that in a year's time, there will be more products like it. For now, I'll probably get a basic unit to have in my truck. A computer based product would do me no good, but I see why you'd be frustrated. I was shocked when I heard that they streaming service they offer only includes the music stations.