With a subscription, satellite radio offers high-quality music, sports and news channels with more variety than terrestrial FM stations and no annoying commercials. In addition, satellites provide coast-to-coast coverage, which means that you can listen to the same programming in New England as you drive down Southern California.
While the three major providers of satellite radio (Sirius, XM and WorldSpace) have slightly different broadcasting systems, they all share some common components: a system of satellites that orbit Earth in parallel geostationary orbits and ground repeater stations that receive and decode the signals transmitted from the satellites. Satellite radio receivers are able to unscramble the data stream sent from the satellites and translate it into over 170 channels of music, news, sports and talk.
Satellite radio has been around for years, and the service continues to grow. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) made the S band available for Digital Audio Broadcasting, or DAB, which allows satellite companies to transmit a clean, digital signal with static-free music at a higher quality than AM/FM and near CD-quality.
Several automakers included satellite radio in their cars as standard equipment, and you can also add it with aftermarket hardware and a subscription to either SiriusXM or XM Radio. While XM beat Sirius to the market, XM’s subscriber base declined in recent years, and it was purchased by Sirius to form SiriusXM Radio. The combined company has more content than ever, with exclusive channels from Howard Stern and other talk show hosts and a range of music genres to choose from.
Auto Amazon Links: No products found.