Sirius XM SkyDock Brings Full Satellite Radio Experience to iPhone

Robby

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Sirius XM SkyDock Brings Full Satellite Radio Experience to iPhone

Popular Science said:
skydock_landscape_ipod.jpg

Jalopy-bound Sirius XM devotees don't have to spring for a full sat-radio upgrade to listen to Howard Stern in their hoopties anymore. Today Sirius XM intro'ed the XM SkyDock, a device that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a car satellite radio, letting subscribers kick finicky streaming apps to the curb.
The dock itself has Sirius XM's own radio receiver chip on the inside, so it provides full access to their entire lineup. It does need to connect to the car's cigarette power adapter to run, but it will also charge your iPhone at the same time. Radio gets to your stereo system via an aux output or built-in FM transmitter. And you, naturally, need to set up a sat-radio antenna to catch the signal.

The companion iPhone app, which requires OS version 3.0, is free in the iTunes store and works in both portrait and landscape modes. From the app, you get full access to all Sirius XM channels and a couple other goodies. First, if you hear a song you like, you can tag it, then review your tagged items, and jump to the iTunes store to buy them with a single click. There's also a built-in local weather widget, which is nice, since you can't exit the Sirius XM app to check the weather elsewhere without interrupting playback.

But how is this better than the existing streaming app you can already get, you ask? Two reasons: it gives you access to the whole sat-radio catalog; and it's a real consistent radio signal, not a Web stream.

Sirius XM reps aren't commenting about whether or not SkyDocks for other devices will be available in the future, but I guess we'll see how this one goes to get started.

The SkyDock ($120) and its accompanying app (free) will both be available this fall.
[Via Popular Science]
 
Another satellite radio expert has decided to shout his opinions out loud:

XM was about music discovery. You cant get that on an iPod. You can only listen to what you ALREADY KNOW But what did XM tell the consumer? That David Bowie was falling from the sky?

Sirius was on its way to bankruptcy before it signed Howard Stern. Now alive, the stunning thing is HOW FEW PEOPLE FOLLOWED HOWARD TO SIRIUS In one fell swoop, Howard marginalized himself, took himself off the national stage, and no matter how much Mel Karmazin polishes the apple, it turns out MOST PEOPLE DONT WANT TO PAY FOR RADIO
 
You cant beat sky, virgin is well, just a seriously bad copy of sky imo when it comes to TV, internet maybe not but i dont know much on that.
 
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