Blubyu12

What's the major difference between XM and Sirius Radio? Clair parts has XM radios for A8L for $101. Are these things being phased out a la On star?

A4xIV / Nadroj

yes, audi does not sell xm anymore.

BongoCruiser

I have XM in my 2004 A8L and love it.

audirocks1

and prefer the Sirius in the Audi vs. XM in the house... Just personal preference, either way I'd never go back to radio...

MP4.2+6.0

Station change speed is like molassis--typical sat stuff. About the same as my HD DirecTV, which is just tolerable. I'm guessing Sirius is no different here. And, the constant XM self promotion on the supposed "commercial free" system gets pretty old too. Some people post XM is technically better for compression, but it may just be opinions rather than facts.

But, it's free so far so I just leave it be--prior owner never deactivated I guess; it's been 10 months now. On that point, I think Sirius at least used to sell a lifetime subscription if you wanted it; I don't think XM did, though my car may prove me wrong.

Meanwhile, the ipod with everything on the unit recorded from CD at 320kps is far more satisfying, and I'm using my son's old cast off at that. Kind of like Tivo compared to a plain old tuner. Yes, $$ though for the AMI upgrade. Huge selection of songs, right there on the MMI screen. Choose by album, artist, genre, etc--very good approximation of the ipod. No compromise either where you can't see the song info like on the preset station list for radio. And I suppose if I really want the top, top drawer sound I still have the 6 CD slots to select from the several hundred ipod album recordings I loaded thus far.

A4xIV / Nadroj

much better than stern who only works 4 days a week and takes off a few months a year.

..and jim norton is funny as hell

MP4.2+6.0

Ok, for that I get it. I'm off in tunes world.

Rowlie

I did get the lifetime subscription for Sirius. Payout begins at about 3 years, but it's nice not to pay a bill every month. It can be transferred twice to other receivers, so it should prove a good investment. I'm not sure if you can get lifetime from XM or not.

XM has baseball, Sirius has football & basketball.

Blubyu12

So basically it's preference. Clair parts has the XM receivers for $101 bucks, as compared to $500 for the Sirius receivers I've seen somewhere else (can't remember where). Was there talk of a merger with XM and Sirius? If so, will the channel lineup be the same?