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For any of you that are thinking of or are subscribed to a satellite radio company like XM, may find it useless in the future. Aside from their fiscal problems stated in the news recently...new technologies allow regular stations to broadcast a digital signal as well...but for free.Check it out http://apnews.excite.com/article/200210 ... OO901.html

I think, worse case, both providers go Chapter 11. A company comes and buys up the hardware, studios, frequencies and subscribers for pennies compared to the start up costs they burnned through. and continues to offer the services. Digital FM, if stations pay the upgrade and licensing fees, will only improve the sound quality (and allow message brodcasting simular to RDS) not the programming quality.

quote:Digital FM, if stations pay the upgrade and licensing fees, will only improve the sound quality (and allow message brodcasting simular to RDS) not the programming quality.Exactly.. plus Digital FM doesn't mean you can listen to the station all the way across the country, a benefit of Satellite Radio.

quote:For any of you that are thinking of or are subscribed to a satellite radio company like XM, may find it useless in the future. Aside from their fiscal problems stated in the news recently...new technologies allow regular stations to broadcast a digital signal as well...but for free.Check it out http://apnews.excite.com/article/200210 ... OO901.html I've payed for XM Radio for about a year now and will continue for as long as the company is around. I try to listen to FM, but you get so many adds and talk that is so much less on XM. Most of the channels on XM that allow adds keep them to under 2 minutes per hour which is exceptable IMO. Now imagine how much more time will be given to adds if the FM stations have to pay for new equipment. Then there is the variety of programming that I get on XM. Whenever I go on a long drive, I tune it to the comedy channels or switch over to many of the news/sport channels. Typically I have a hard time finding more than 8 channels on FM when driving, but with XM I will always have the 100 channels that I know. I guess free is good, but I'll pay for good content any day.

Valid points...but I never said that satellite radio wasn't nice to have...it is. But you need many customers to keep these companies going, and everyday listeners (the majority) aren't buying in. I like not having to listen to commercials and be able to listen to 1 good station on long trips. Unfortunately many people have more shallow pockets than us.