Help! My Max has finally arrived (let's have a woo-hoo) but my wonderful dealer miscoded the order and got me Sirius instead of the XM I ordered. No biggie, right? Well I didn't think so either until I checked out the Sirius web site tonight and found that they changed their multi-year plans.

For XM, you can get 2yrs for $199 and 3 yrs for $289.

For Sirius, you can get 1yr for $142.45 and they throw in 3 free months at the end, NO more 2yr, 3yr options. That would be around $285 for 2 years, 3 months (they don't do the 3 months more than 1x). It would be $427 for 3 years, 3 months. This is a $138 difference for the 3 year sub I was going to do.

XM is now commercial-free, so Sirius has lost that advantage.

My options are these:

1) Make the dealer swap out the sirius for the xm module. This is no big deal, but as I understand XM vs Sirius, they'd have to swap the antenna too. That might get ugly with a factory installed unit.

2) Make the dealer knock $100 or $150 off the final price for the goof.

3) Suck it up and move on, enjoying my new Max regardless of the band of Sat radio.

 

Personally, I would suck it up and move on. Changing the antenna is a pain in the a$$ and I would not trust the dealer to do that. I know because I installed Sirius myself and it was difficult tucking the antenna wire behind the weather stripping of the rear window.

Either brand of satellite radio is MUCH better than any FM station out there.

Good luck with your new car!

 

stick with Sirius, in terms of sound quality, they sound the same to me, but paying extra for much less commercials is worth it

 

I would make them switch them out. Or as someone else mentioned, give you back some $$$ for the goof.

 

No way that sirius is anywhere near the level of quality that XM is. XM has over a million subscribers (and climbing), and they recently (feb 1st) remove ALL commercials from their musical programming. They have markedly better performance, due to the fact they have a great deal more land-based repeaters than sirius. Sirius was nearly a year late to the party, and I don't see anyway they can ever catch up. When most people think of satellite radio technology, they refer to it as XM...it's just like tivo.

Get the XM box...you'll be much, much happier in the long run not only in sound quality but also in your day to day use.

 

I know Grubs has the kit of rthe max but are their any other xm kits that work with 04 bose radio. Alos can you mount the ant. in the rear deck area.

 

Sirius has a lifetime plan. Give them $499.99 and the radio is activated for life.

http://www.siriusradio.com/servlet/C...=1065475754240

 

Yeah, but that sticks with the radio (which sticks with the Max). I'll be out of the max in 3 years.

I do believe that I'll stick with the Sirius though. I like the feature where you can access all the channels via the internet if you are a subsriber. That will come in handy once I'm well hooked.

 

FYI, you can use the XM antena with Sirius. I have both systems and they both work with the XM antena that came with my car, just switch the modules which is a snap to do.

 

Good call - I've had Sirius for 7 weeks now and it's awesome. I hemmed and hawed in Best Buy for like 45 minutes, but now that I have it it has sold itself to three people I know. Here's what's been happening:

Me: "Hey, I'll drive to lunch today."

Co-workers: "This station is awesome! What is this!?"

Then they'll go pick one up for themselves. It's also happened with people we've had over to our house; I don't think anyone in our generation (I'm 29) has ever really experienced "good" radio. My brother got it last weekend, and spent pretty much every waking minute flipping through various channels. Same with my wife, she is addicted to Backspin (the old school rap channel). It's the only gadget I've ever brought home where she's then BEGGED me to get her one too.

After having another couple over, the dude had bought an Avalanche and it spurred him to activate his OEM XM system.

XM or Sirius, it's all good. I haven't touched a CD or AM/FM since I bought my Sirius Jampack from Best Buy. Now, all I have to do is buy stock!

 

If the dealer messed up the order, make them fix it. I have XM and I love it. I have never heard Sirius, so I cannot make any comparisons except for the obvious. 9.99 vs. 12.99 for both 100% commercial free music. Like what was said earlier, XM is a strong company with a rapidly growing subscriber base. It doesn't look like they will be going away any time soon.

 

Nother FYI: If anyone has an audiophile quality system and knows about audio will be surprised to hear that Sirius sound quality is inferior to XM. I myself have about 12k sunk into my audio system in my max and bought the sirius module because I they had more of the music channels that I listen too. Afer connecting it I was surprised at the difference in sound and ended up canceling it 2 weeks later.

 

Sirius has upgraded their codec MANY times since their debut, and they did a massive upgrade on 01/19 that was awesome. The voices have lost much of their "tinny" quality, and the music is seriously near-CD quality.

 

Thanks for the (as usual) great advice all. After weighing all the options, I went with option "FOUR". Knock another $200 off the recently (today) ordered ARMADA LE for my wife

We're a Nissan-only stable now!

Picked up the Max and am loving it so far. No shimmy (my biggest concern), none of the other problems that have frequented the forum. A few things to get used to so far:

1) HID's. I've never driven with HID's before, and that top beam cutoff is a trip! It also takes some getting used to to not have the high beams "brighter". They're just "bigger".

2) No auto locks?? Every vehicle I've had for the past 10 years has automatically locked when you cross 10mph or so. Did Nissan just miss this? I feel unsecure, but I WILL get over it

3) "Other" lighting- I heard someone mention it before, but why oh WHY did Nissan put the "auto" selecton on the headlights between "off" and "parking lights". If they are in the "on" position, you must pass through "auto" to turn them off which makes them flash off and then back on briefly. A much smarter setup would have been "off", "Parking", "Auto", "on". Yes, this would flash the parking lights briefly on the way to "Auto" but parking lights are not as obnoxious as HID's flashing at someone.

Other than those minor quirks, I am ONE HAPPY CAMPER! This car ROCKS!! The power train is to die for, the stereo is better than what my 42yo butt needs, and all the creature comforts.......WOWZA!

Here's what I got:

04SE 5sp Auto, Journey, VDC, Sunroof, Sirius, Floor Mats, Splash Guards
Onyx, Black Leather

NOW, on to the window tint, remote start, and DVD Video install

 

Hmm I actually cancelled it around 1/15 or so when they shuffled the channel line up and took off one of the stations I would listen to all the time. Maybe I'll reactivate it and give it another try if they updated their data stream.

 

Well, if you already have XM and are happy with it, I don't know if I'd bother.
Both services are similar enough IMO that I don't personally see the point of owning both. If you want the NFL, NBA, and NHL, get Sirius. Otherwise, either will work for most people. In my somewhat brief experiences with XM, I can say that Sirius does appear to be more "hits driven", while XM plays more "obscure" stuff.

I can tell you my brother chose Sirius because of the rebate you get on the Audiovox equipment; buy a car kit, the home kit, and tuner for $200 and then get a $50 rebate directly from Sirius in 3-4 weeks (which is exactly what I did). The Delphi SkyFi is much more expensive, and IMO the Audiovox tuner is nicer as well. Still, if I bought a GM vehicle that had XM preinstalled, I'd probably just forget the extra $3/mo I'd save from having existing Sirius subscriptions in my home and wife's car and activate it. Anyone putting themselves through a headache debating the merits of both services is wasting their time and energy, IMO.

The difference in Sirius SQ pre and post 01/19 is dramatic, though... I'd run the music through my Polks (at home) at top volume, and you could hear all kinds of artifacting. Now, most of the artifacting is just gone. I don't know what they did, but the music quality is vastly better.

 

Yup, you better jump on the wagon now. If you follow the path of XM's rising stock prices you see why Sirius will be so valuable in the future. I've got 200 shares of Sirius and bought in around $1.90/share. The stock price made a big jump in late December to $4.00/share...unfortunately it dropped to about $3.00/share where it's been trading for the last month. Anyway, Sirius has very very very little debt when compared to XM and is constantly catching up by leaps and bounds. I would imagine the stock price will more then double in the next 6 months...I'll keep my fingers crossed.