Non-early adopter XMSR customer report from the field:
I picked up the Delphi at Circuit City this weekend. CC and Best Buy got the product in just this week. Sales people were keenly aware of it and described the product as pretty hot, and there was a lot of activity around the displays for both SIRI and XMSR. The Best Buy salesperson indicated that SIRI is doing well with the younger crowd because the perception is that the music is better. But to me the Delphi has advantages as it's portable to inside one's residence. You'd need an extra adapters (extra $70) to do this. Right now SIRI doesn't have that feature.
This will spread by word of mouth as the subscriber base grows. I had my girl friend with me (early adopter type) and she is still debating if she should wait for the SIRI portable, as the hook for her was the ad free content. However, after listening to various XMSR stations we rarely heard advertising anyway, so perhaps that so called advantage to SIRI is overstated so she is picking up the Delphi.
Easy install as far as the unit, but had to leave for a few hours so that they could run wires to antenna under the car carriage into the trunk and mount on rear hood. CC did this for $30 (Best Buy quoted $70). The whole product including install was $230. Only negative are the wires hanging from the unit, and will need to clean up and attach it somewhere. The unit itself is compact and removable from the carriage, and uses an adhesive (no screws) for the mount. The subscription to XMSR was easy and painless online, and the signal came in almost immediately.
The service itself is light years ahead of regular radio (which I've grown to hate). I found ten or so stations that I could listen to with a high level of consumer satisfaction. There are several good business station including CNET and CNBC. A great comedy channel that you just don't get anywhere on AM/FM. I was a little disappointed in one aspect of the music as I like techo (which is sometimes loosely called "dance"). The four dance channels however fell outside my preferred "dance" genre (John Digwood, Orbital, etc.). There was a very good new age station. It would be very easy to see how most consumers will be huge fans of these service though.
I took an hour drive from Tacoma to the Hood Channel area and back. Like regular radio, you briefly lose reception under bridges. On the way back I suddenly hit a two minute dead zone, which was a little irritating as I was into a great Billy Crystal comedy routine. Still it was a superior experience.
IMO SIRI and XMSR will surprise on the upside over the next year on subscriber growth. The OEM market will take off with the new car season, and the installation market looks like it's arrived in terms of product (like the Delphi), price, ease of use and the muscle of the big box electronics retailers. |
