Weisbrich
I understand your post, and I agree about your questions on Stern. However, on the other issues.....
Remember, the target is automobiles.
In that connection,
a) It is going to be a very long time before you can drive coast-to-coast using your wireless Internet connection;
b) When driving in a car, there is something to be said for being able to set the radio on the station of choice and driving;
c) Your view of SDARS is far too narrow. XM, GM, Honda, and Toyota are viewing it more broadly, as a sizable "data pipe" to the automobile. There is something to be said for auto manufacturers to be able to do software updates while you drive down the road, or to deliver realtime traffic information as in Navtraffic, or to download the latest street maps for your Nav system or any number of other uses;
d) When auto manufacturers start integrating IP entertainment services as factory installs, I'll start to think about IP as a delivery method. For now, it isn't a very realistic concern;
e) SDARS and one-way communications is an inherently better way of delivering this particular content. There is simply no need for a bidirectional communications channel at this point.
You should keep in mind that the upload portion of the bidi communications is very nominal bandwidth. What this means is that XM and SIRI will be implementing features that require bidi communications long before the download bandwidth is available to deliver high-bitrate content.
BTW, with "Replay Radio" and other like programs on the internet, I can fall asleep and laptop battery power allowing, record the entire content onto my hard drive for later listening.
Over the course of the next year you'll see a huge expansion of TIVO-like functionality in XM, and perhaps even Sirius, radios.
I would encourage you to look more deeply at these technologies. They're going to be around for a long, long time. XM will be net-income profitable within 3 years. |
