Satellite radio advice...

Looking for some advice from other satellite radio owners out there. I'm finally making the purchase this spring and looking to get a plug and play deck that I can take from the car to the truck and to the boat. Right now I'm deciding between the Sportster 5 and Starmate 5, I looove the Sportster 5, it seems to have the best menus, not as much lag in between channels, and easiest to read display, and I can get it for $130.

However, only the Starmate 5 has a la carte programming, and I'd much rather have that and pick almost all the available music channels for my 50, on the Sportster 5 I can only get the mostly music package, which is more expensive, and is missing out on some music channels I'd like to have (don't really need talk/sports/or news). Not to mention the Starmate would be $100 and then only $7 or so a month compared to the $12-$13 mostly music plan...

Anyone have experience with either the starmate or sportster? And which plans are you guys using?

I've got a sporster 5 in the boat. If sunlight hits it that nice display becomes very hard to read. So I guess the question is where are you going to mount it? The siriusconnect kit is very nice letting you control it via the deck and you have and you won't have to worry about where it's at anymore. Although if i remember right it took two extra parts one was around $75 and the other $50. Having used it in a car I love the interface.

In all honesty I didn't use it much this past season because the music quality is noticeably poor to my ears even when I'm being pulled. I've been loading up usb drivers for music playback and I don't think I'll reactivate it this season, kinda sad really.

I have the Starmate and love it. It is portable to the boombox, boat, SUV. Very rugged radio and have not had any problems in the past 3 years. Also have the lifetime service.

Red Dragons

The Siruis SUBX1 boombox is a must have. Especially at the price of only fifty bucks. I would get whatever tuner works with it. The sound quality is way better than the boom box that replaced it. I have a home antenna that broadcasts wireless to a receiver that plugs into the tuner. That means you mount the antenna outside, plug the receiver into the tuner, and you can carry your tunes anywhere inside or outside without having to deal with an antenna.
The SUBX1 has been discontinued. That is why it is being sold so cheap. Trust me...............you can't possibly buy this kind of sound quality anywhere else for 50.00
http://www.consumerdepot.com/product...R&referer=srch

has the sound quality of sat radio improved at all over the last couple years?

how about the internet streams?

Originally Posted by brucemac

has the sound quality of sat radio improved at all over the last couple years?

how about the internet streams?

I have been listening to Sirius since the beginning. I have not noticed any improvement over the years. If your play back gear is quality stuff, the sound quality will be one notch below CD.
I don't know about the internet streams.

I have Sirius on my boat and we very rarely use it, generally only when we are out somewhere that I can't get internet and and stream Pandora from my iPhone. I don't notice any difference between Pandora or Sirius, but I'm not paying a ton of attention to the "quality" of the sound, as long as it sounds good to me and isn't breaking up.

Wow, for those who don't notice a SQ difference between sat radio and pandora....

I just got done upgrading the sound system in my truck. I've got a pioneer deck that will run the ipod off of usb, my iphone via bluetooth, my xm radio via an aux in, fm radio, and cd. I've got component speakers in the doors getting about 100w per channel, and two 10s under the back seat getting 375w each. The system sounds much much better than a factory system, but was done on a poor-man's budget (less than $500 invested, lots of CL and used parts)

I would rank the SQ in the following order: CD, ipod, mp3cd, pandora over bluetooth, fm radio, xm, am radio. XM sounds like complete arse, really. However, I live in the desert and will frequenly have long drives with no radio stations at all and no cell coverage, so no streaming pandora. Same goes for on the lake, which is the reason to have xm.

But truly, the sq on xm is way worse than a decent fm station.