So i'm thinking of buying a few of these units for xmas presents. I bought my father in law this one:

which he seems to really dig, so i'm thinking of buying it for my father as well (as it appears to have fallen $100 in the month since i bought it, natch). however, for my sister's husband i was thinking about getting a Sirius one, just because i was under the impression that Sirius had Howard Stern and NFL, and he's a young man. Does anyone have any preference one way or the other in terms of either which provider or which receivers to look at?

i know someone whos tried both and he prefers sirius. i never asked him why, but he does none the less.

i prefer sirius.

but i don't have a receiver. i decided against it because i really don't drive THAT much to warrant it for my car. and my friend gave me her log in so i can listen online anytime.

howard stern is a definite plus for sirius.

and their jamband channel is WAY better.

Doesn't Sirius also have Little Steven's Underground Garage? It seems that on the surface Sirius has better programming.

From just an equipment perspective I prefer XM. All the Sirus equipment seems to be soooo big and bulky. They are years behind XM in that department.

Yeah Sirus has Stern and NFL.

XM has MLB, NHL, Big Ten, Pac 10, & Big Ten basketball and football. I used to love Stern but now I listen to Opie and Anthony on XM. They're just funnier, simple as that.

I'm sitting here with a print out channel list from both Xm and Sirius. XM has more music channels & more sports channels.

Sirius has NPR though, which is cool.

All I know is that I've had XM for three years now and it just seems to be getting better and better. One of my best friends has Sirius and he's very happy with it.

I think it's just a matter of whether you want baseball or football, Stern or O&A, bulky equipment or smaller.

Howard Stern means Sirius for me.

bulky equipment. DEFINITELY.

I can tell you this - from what I've heard, both service providers will have deals after Thanksgiving that have various devices FREE after a mail-in rebate. We're getting to the point that cell phones were at several years ago - give away the hardware to sell the service.

Aside from that, if you have DirecTV you can listen to a bunch of the XM stations starting today. They've replaced the Music Choice channels.

this is interesting indeed. i mean where did you hear this?

and thanks for the analysis, busty, that was kind of the breakdown i was looking for.

Your best bet is to try to find some stations on each, look at their playlists, and decide which you'll be listening to more. They are otherwise more or less the same.

It's a good strategy but like i said, i'm not really interested in buying one for myself, i was more interested in giving them as gifts.

Sirius has The Underground Garage, which has Handsome Dick Manitoba every night. Seals the deal for me.

No prob man. Dawgs right. They started doing this last year. No doubt they'll be giving away the smaller devices to new subscribers.

You know, I'm not sure...it was probably one of the sites I've been browsing that have had post-Thanksgiving Day sales info leaked to them. Here's a couple of links :

http://www.bfads.net/

http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/

Here's a couple nuggets from those sites :

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 3713296841
( according to the site, this will be $30 - down from $50 )

http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... ode=319905
http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... ode=319788
( according to the site, these 2 will be FREE after rebate )

Take the info with a grain of salt - these are "leaks" that may not pan out. But it's a good idea just to keep yer eyes pealed...I'd imagine that the 2 satellite radio providers are really gonna hit it hard this Xmas to try to reach more mainstream consumers.

Uh...like Busty said while I was throwin' this post together. lol.

SIRIus - cuz i have stock in it

I would pay to have non-crappy radio. I don't listen to the radio because free radio sucks, and like with cable TV, I will pay to have access to decent programming.

I regularly listen to The Underground Garage, and have purchased a fair amount of music that was introduced to me.

xm because the programmers know their stuff a lot more. sirius does have the celebrity pull, but xm is more of a long-termer, in my opinion.

Sirius subscriber here, so I'm curious what you mean. Pity this fool bc i don't know what programmers do to enhance one broadcast over another. Are we talking DJs or something? Curious bc I'm considering changing over. And it's not the celebrities that are keeping me at Sirius. Please advise.

i'm probably going to get sirius b/c of stern but i think xm is the only one with a walkman type portable right now. i think sirius has one but it's a lot bigger than the xm and has a bunch of wires and shit sticking out of it. sirius also has this:



which i was all set to order, but it's not really a radio. it's more like an mp3 player that lets you record sirius streams and then play them back which is pretty lame. i think you can add mp3's to it and it has an fm tuner.

Has anyone with sirius listened to Tissue Time With Heidi Cortez? From what I heard on Stern this morning, that alone has to be worth getting Sirius.

i agree (LOC)...however the rest of the stations are so-so..alot of bs...i am sure xm is the same way...

you can also listen online as well which is a bonus (i am sure xm has soemthing like this). however the stream isnt that great.

My dad subscribed to XM, got two receivers, one for free. He sent me one so I could listen to Cubs games down here in STL. I couldn't really recommend XM since I've flipped through the music channels maybe once.

I'm planning on signing up for Sirius specifically for Stern. I don't plan on buying a receiver, since I can listen over my laptop (they even will replay the show throughout the day, so you don't have to listen in the morning). If they have one of those free deals going on, I'll go for that.