Sirius VS XM - Technical
Sirius and XM have taken two very different paths when it comes to how to use satellites in orbit.
XM has chosen to park one satellite over each coast and use repeaters in large cities. Sirius has chosen to use a constellation of 3 satellites that always has 2 over the center of North America and many local repeaters.
The Satellite radio nerds like to argue over which is better. The answer like all engineering problems is, "it depends." The XM approach is better for stationary locations and is great in a majority of locations. The Sirius approach favors mobile platforms.
That is not to say that XM is bad in cars or Sirius is bad in a stationary location. Just each excels in different areas.
As to audio quality? Both are very similar and speakers and equipment mean much when it comes to music. However, in the area of traffic channels it is apparent that Sirius has devoted much more bandwidth to their traffic channels than XM. In fact it is hard to understand the speech of the announcers on XM.
Given that XM has dozens more channels that Sirius it is necessary to use the bandwidth a little more sparingly, but this is pretty ridiculous.
Antenna aiming is a little different between the two. Since XM is stationary you just have to AIM to the South East or South West depending on which coast you are located. Once you locate the strongest signal it will never move if you are stationary.
Sirius takes a little more effort. You have to aim toward the center us the US. To get the best signal you need to get both satellites at the same time. One will work but if you can find a location that lets you see both you will get the strongest signal. As long as you get to a 7 out of 10 you will probably never lose signal.
Note, antenna aiming is negligible for both in a car. You install the antenna on the roof or trunk depending on your car and you are done.
In a car both systems are affected by not have a clear line of sight to the sky, bridges and tall building are a problem, but terrestrial repeaters tend to solve the tall building problem.
I don't know much about how they transmit, but I bet if you do a little digging you can find all the information you want on that issue.
XM has chosen to park one satellite over each coast and use repeaters in large cities. Sirius has chosen to use a constellation of 3 satellites that always has 2 over the center of North America and many local repeaters.
The Satellite radio nerds like to argue over which is better. The answer like all engineering problems is, "it depends." The XM approach is better for stationary locations and is great in a majority of locations. The Sirius approach favors mobile platforms.
That is not to say that XM is bad in cars or Sirius is bad in a stationary location. Just each excels in different areas.
As to audio quality? Both are very similar and speakers and equipment mean much when it comes to music. However, in the area of traffic channels it is apparent that Sirius has devoted much more bandwidth to their traffic channels than XM. In fact it is hard to understand the speech of the announcers on XM.
Given that XM has dozens more channels that Sirius it is necessary to use the bandwidth a little more sparingly, but this is pretty ridiculous.
Antenna aiming is a little different between the two. Since XM is stationary you just have to AIM to the South East or South West depending on which coast you are located. Once you locate the strongest signal it will never move if you are stationary.
Sirius takes a little more effort. You have to aim toward the center us the US. To get the best signal you need to get both satellites at the same time. One will work but if you can find a location that lets you see both you will get the strongest signal. As long as you get to a 7 out of 10 you will probably never lose signal.
Note, antenna aiming is negligible for both in a car. You install the antenna on the roof or trunk depending on your car and you are done.
In a car both systems are affected by not have a clear line of sight to the sky, bridges and tall building are a problem, but terrestrial repeaters tend to solve the tall building problem.
I don't know much about how they transmit, but I bet if you do a little digging you can find all the information you want on that issue.
posted by Unknown | 9:15 PM
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