Sup folks. I am sick and tired of dam cd's and full of Advertisement FM radio. I have the Pioneer DEH-P8500MP (beautiful ) Anyways I was thinking about switching to XM Radio since my head unit already comes pre installed. I want to buy a nice XM antenna on eBay.

My main goal is to find out how hard will it be to connect the antenna to the unit, run the wiring, and the difficulty of the overall setup.

Also anyone with XM please feel free to opinionate on thier service. THANKS

 

bump bump bump

 

You will need more than the antenna to have XM on your radio. You will also need the tuner itself. Just trying to help....

--Don

 

what is the tuner exactly. and if i need so much extra equipment, what does my xm radio enabled head unit do...

 

The tuner is what actually recieves the signal. The fact the HU is XM ready means just that. You can plug the XM equiptment into it, but nothing is actually included. The same theory as buying a "cable ready" television.

--Don

 

You need to buy a brain and an antenna. The antenna gets plugged into the brain and the brain gets plugged into the HU. Am I correct Don? I forget how we (You) did mine

 

The benefit of an XM ready receiver (like the Alpine CDA-9807 I just bought), is that the receiver can control the radio stations (instead of having to switch stations at the tuner). So you can set your favorite presets on the "XM" band of your receiver, just like you do for FM1, FM2, AM, etc. All you do is hit the band button a few times to get to the XM1, XM2, XM3 presets.

In addition, there's an input to hardwire the receiver to the tuner instead of having to use the FM modulator function of the tuner - this ain't nothin special as most receivers have an AUX in.

 

Yes Andrew...ya did learn suttin afterall.

--Don

 

 

XM is definitely worth it. It is the only thing I listen to these days. My Pioneer headunit even plays MP3's and I don't use it. I have the Terk XM3 antenna and love it. Most antennas are big and ugly but this one doesn't look too bad. Here is a pic - sorry about the poor quality.

 

nice h/u. i just installed mine. i see no point in paying $$$ to listen to radio every month. if you have an mp3 player burn songs which have better sq and play them for free.

 

I've had xm for over 2 months now and for 10 bucks a month it's well worth it. I don't listen to CD's or FM at all now.

 

Come on guys...let's get SIRIUS!

 

homeboy is right sirius is definitely SERIOUS!

 

If you compared sattelite radio quality to mp3, what bitrate would sattelite radio be? I'm guessing it would be pretty low like 128 or so. Anyone know?

 

check ebay for pioneer xm tuners. they're around $100 or so. sometimes you'll find a tuner and antenna combo. install is simple - plug the antenna into the xm tuner, connect a "p-bus" cable between your head unit and the xm tuner, activate, and you're all set.

 

well depending upon how you have it connected-I would say if you have it digitally connected to a XM or sirius ready HU thru the tuner, you'd have lets say a 128+ bit rate-maybe closer to 162 or so.

a quality CD is 192kb

 

I have Sirius and I love it!

Think of it like this:
Going from regular FM to satellite radio is like going from only local TV channels to digital cable, there is no comparison.

Here are pics of my Sirius controllerr & antenna:

 

IMO, Sattelite radio is a waste of money..but, I have 3 CDs in my car each with 200 songs on them, and that covers any music I want to listen to..and the local radio stations cover any news I could want..If I wanted to be REALLY lazy, and if I had a money tree in my yard, I'd buy a 10 disc MP3 CD changer and put every song I could ever want to listen to on 10 CDs and never have to worry about it again..

 

It doesn't matter how many songs you can get on CD's, it would never compare to satellite radio. The variety of music is incredible! I used to be a DJ in New York years ago and I have missed hearing a lot of that music that is no longer played on FM and is hard to find in stores. I tune into the "Strobe" on my satellite radio and it is all there. I am hearing music that I haven't heard in over 20 years. This one station alone is worth the price of $12.99 a month.

I like the fact that I can listen to "specific" types of music when I want to, as much as I want to, with "no commerical" interruptions. The quality of the music is good, especially with the Bose system. I can go on and on.

For anyone out there who is a music enthusiast and loves "all" types of music, satellite radio is the way to go! I have not gone back to FM/AM or even CD's since I had my installed.

Don't knock it until you try it!

 

dude u have am XM ready HU with sirius FM modded and your antenna on your rear deck....your reception and SQ is good??


I am hesitant to replace my kenwood HU with anything but kenwood due to the quality loss by modding it to another HU

 

My SQ is as good as it gets with an FM modulator. My reception is fine with antenna on the deck, too.

It would be better with a Sirius-ready HU. But, I already had the HU when I got the Sirius hardware for free, so that's just how it worked out.

BlitzSafe makes an adapter I can use to directly control my Kenwood Sirius tuner with my Pioneer XM-ready HU. I just havent gotten around to buying it yet.

 

I recently installed XM in my car. I initially hooked it up via the FM modulator and it sounded awful. I just finished hooking it up via RCA into an auxiliary input adapter and it sounds near-CD quality. So far so good...

Tony