How does satellite radio work? I understand the concept of digital transmission.
How strong is the signal? On my new car, it cuts off about 5-8 seconds after I enter my garage, so the radio must store a few seconds of signal. If I go under a short bridge, the signal doesn’t drop. If it can’t get the signals in my garage, how does it get under a metal bridge? How do people listen to satellite radio in their home? My only assumption is that there are multiple signals, broadcast several seconds apart and the radio picks one. If this is correct, how many different signals are there? 2? 3? More?
I don’t know how many stations they have (200?). What’s the total baud rate? 1GB/sec? Do they use multiple frequencies?
The last two cars I purchased had satellite radio pre-installed. Who pays for the satellite radio? Does SiriusXM pay Chrysler to put it in their cars? Does VW put it in their cars as an inducement to buy their cars? Is the added cost so trivial such that every car has one?
Why were Sirius and XM allowed to merge? Didn’t that create a monopoly? Were radios that were XM able to receive Sirius transmissions with a new “unlock” key?
How often do they broadcast unlock and lock keys? I turned my radio on and about 20 minutes later, it went to an advertisement telling me that my subscription had expired. My 2011 Dodge came with a one year subscription. My 2014 VW only came with 90 days. Did SiriusXM change their policy or do different car manufacturers have different contracts with SiriusXM?
Until I was given a free trial with my new car, I never even considered paying for radio. I never did buy a subscription because I thought their pricing was underhanded. (e.g. they quote one figure, but they have “fees” which really are nothing more than a price increase). What percent of new car buyers buy Sirius after their free trial?
Wikipedia talks a bit about the tech: There are 2 satellites and about 800 ground-based repeater stations in the US. It broadcasts at about 2.4 GHz, using a total of about 800 kbps spread over 4 Hz for actual content, and a little more for redundancy, or 4 to 64 kbps per station. Part of why it sounds like crap.
No idea about their business plan. Likely they did what they had to do to survive when satellite radio becomes increasingly irrelevant compared to smartphones.
I have XM (I like it but doubt I’ll keep it after the 1 year trial expires) and I’ve wondered too if it stores a few seconds of signal. When I go into the parking structure at work it stays on for about the time you’ve given before conking out.
When one considers CD’s, smart phones w/web access, IPODS/PADS, etc., I just can’t see satellite radio succeeding. It seems like a product that came around too late and costs too much compared to the alternatives.
Also the quality of the broadcast signal varies greatly from station to station on the same carrier. You may get the pop music channels streaming at a halfway decent bit rate, but that obsure 24 bluegrass channel may be so stripped down that it becomes practically mono. If you play that on a decent high end system it will sound like crap. Might as well stream YouTube for free.
The radios definitely do buffer some content. At least on the radio I’ve got, the reception bars seem to roughly correspond to how many seconds are buffered.
With the deactivation signals, from what I understand they send them out pretty frequently and when your subscription lapses your radio will be on the “deactivate” list for several weeks and then they occasionally go back and send out old ones. I actually had a used radio that worked for months, which I assume is because whoever owned it before just quit using it and so the radio never got the deactivate signal.
If it’s preinstalled in your car, all the parts are made by the car maker (or whichever supplier makes the rest of their AV stuff.) I assume SiriusXM shares whatever is necessary to make the radios work on their network, but I don’t think they provide any free hardware to them or anything like that. The added cost probably is pretty trivial since the cheap standalone receivers are only about $40 and I imagine it costs even less to integrate them into an existing radio.
That’s only for XM. Even though the content is pretty much the same now, the two networks are still separate although many of the new radios can use either one now. One factoid that can be somewhat relevant is that because XM’s satellites are in geostationary orbit you need a good view of the southern horizon just like with satellite TV. If you opt for Sirius, though, they have three satellites in a high altitude tundra orbit so you’re aiming more or less straight up which can lead to better reception further north and if you’re in an area with terrain or buildings blocking the horizon.
In general, though, yeah I’m not sure how sustainable their business model is going to be going forward in the age of streaming mobile music. The satellites are already up there, so I doubt they’re just going to shut down anytime soon, but it may wind up being more of a niche product for long haul truckers and such.
Oh and, yeah, obviously they’re not a monopoly considering the heavy competition from internet streaming and terrestrial radio. One of the terms of the merger set by the FCC is that they couldn’t raise their prices for three years. Since both companies were hemorrhaging money at that point, much of the underhanded pricing came about as ways of getting around that. I actually pay less than I did pre-merger with an la carte plan, but I still definitely liked it better when it was a straightforward $12/month for everything.
