Sirius XM have announced their first radio dock for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, the XM SkyDock taking advantage of OS 3.0’s third-party peripheral integration to add a satellite radio tuner to the handheld and have it controlled by the new companion app. The dock slots into a car’s power point, supporting the PMP with a flexible arm and custom cradle, and not only allows for listening to Sirius XM radio but for tagging tracks that you later want to buy on iTunes.
The rumor of Sirius XM price increases has been confirmed, with customer services representatives apparently informing users that as of March 11th 2009 there will be an increase of $2 for additional subscriptions, while the online internet radio service will now cost $2.99. For that $2.99 all internet radio users will have access to the 128k stream, which previously was the “premium” feed.
All of you long time Sirius XM satellite radio subscribers may have something more to worry about starting in spring. According to “ken.muise” at the Digital Radio Central forums you may have more expensive fees as well as some changes to the service they provide by springtime.
The person who is starting this rumor claims to be an employee of the Sirius XM Activations Department, if anyone would know these new policy changes it would be the activation department. The first rumor outlines that each additional radio added will costs $8.99, which is a $2 increase from standard pricing today. The second string of bad news is that online streaming will now cost you $2.99 for most packages rather than being entirely free. This service can also range up to $8.99 a month for the Mostly Music and family Pack.
XM’s upcoming portable digital satellite radio receiver, the XMp3, has turned up on Best Buy, complete with pricing and more details about the PMP’s functionality. Now confirmed as being made by Pioneer, the XMp3 will have access to up to 170 channels of XM satellite radio for $12.95 a month, together with MP3 and WMA playback. Most interesting, however, is the XMp3’s ability to record up to five different channels simultaneously.
Chrysler has announced that its 2009 model-year cars will be have a wireless communication option called uconnect. Made up of Bluetooth hands-free, hard-drive based media, Sirius TV & Radio, GPS and, most interestingly, the ability to turn your car into a WiFi hotspot, uconnect will be available on most Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles starting in August.
Sony has pulled the covers off two new Xplod in-car CD receivers, the CDX-GT920U and CDX-GT620U. Support for CD and radio is a given, but they also have USB ports for playing music stored on memory sticks and Sony’s Quick BrowZer technology to speed tracklist navigation. Both have fold-down, removable face-plates, which in the GT920U’s case is motorized.
Pioneer have released a number of high-end in-car entertainment systems for their AVIC-F range. The three models – AVIC-F700BT, AVIC-F900BT and Premier branded AVIC-F90BT – all feature XM and satellite radio compatibility, Bluetooth with conversational voice recognition that can be used to control navigation, voice control of a connected iPod and a 5.8-inch WVGA touchscreen. The latter two models also have DVD playback and a built-in MSN Direct tuner.
The merger of the only two satellite radio companies has been approved by the Justice Department who determines whether or not it would negatively affect consumers or not. The only hurdle left is the FCC.
Bowers & Wilkins, known most recently for their amazing Zeppelin radio, are manufacturers of some truly amazing audio solutions. As such, it’s not much of a surprise that they were chosen to add their aural blessing to the upcoming 2009 Jaguar XKR.
It doesn’t use the radio, the TV, or the Internet to get you your football scores, nope, it connects directly to a satellite. It runs on batteries too, so if you lose power and can’t check the radio, TV, or your computer for the scores, this thing has your back.
You are going to have to be pretty addicted to football to buy one of these though. First the display is really bland, it manages to relay all the pertinent information, but its pretty boring.
JP
