Sirius XM Satellite Radio FREE 1/30/13 thru 2/12/13

I left the promo code field blank, used an email address I had used before with them, and voila! It's working now - no need to wait until the 30th ;-)

Why would someone pay for that . . . I predict that they will be out of business when G5-6 is out

The sound quality is definitely terrible, but I find it worth the $24 per 6 months I pay for it. It's nice to spice up the music collection every now and then - but then again, I don't have a smartphone. I'd probably just listen to Pandora (and not use satellite) if I did.

I also like it for all the news channels. Lots of variety there.

Last time this deal came around (October maybe?), my radio never re-activated so I called Sirius and they said the deal was not automatic for everyone. It seems if your radio has been deactivated for more than a year you may need to call them to get this free preview. The Sirius rep didnt confirm the one year timeline, but said "that may be the case". Great customer service, I know.

Just FYI for you guys.

maybe I'm missing something but I have no issues with my sound quality on Sirius/XM. I usually listen to sports talk radio, and going back to AM makes my head hurt.

Quote from nyg99 : maybe I'm missing something but I have no issues with my sound quality on Sirius/XM. I usually listen to sports talk radio, and going back to AM makes my head hurt.

sports radio channels are on the lower bandwidth channels, so they sound a little worse than music channels.

But I too have never had any sound quality issues, and I consider myself to be a little bit of an audiophile... I dont even understand what sound quality issues people are talking about ? if you are transmitting your XM over a transmitter, or listen on 3g... it wont sound all that great

Quote from z531 : True dat. Sounds like you're listening to AM. Thanks for the heads up OP.

Quote from mcl5000 : Huh? What do you mean? Sound quality?

Quote from nojmplease : I think that's exactly what he means. The quality on Sirius/XM is embarrassing (especially for 2013) and has slid downward since the merger. Considering you can stream basically full fidelity from any number of free (or close to free) web-based sources, it's becoming a harder and harder argument to justify spending $13+/month on sat radio.

I thought he was trying to insult people who don't listen to sirius by saying they listen to crappy content on AM.

I agree with nojmplease.... My smartphone with tune-in or any other free internet radio makes sirius an unslick proposition IMO. Better yet, spend $10/month on spotify premium and get on-demand music anytime you want.

Quote from powerslave12r : Beware though, these two weeks of free service are going to cost you a LOT in terms of spam calls from them that will just not go away. Choose wisely.

I thought if you have a receiver in the car, it'll just come back on?

Last time they had something like this for a month.. but I think it only applied to Sirius on your computer (? correct me if I'm wrong).

Does this apply to cars that have Sirius XM as well and aren't currently subscribed to it?

And to the poster on top that's talking about harassing calls. This DOES happen, my friend recently bought a car with Sirius and after the trial was over, he received numerous calls. He kept telling them he wasn't interested, but they kept on pushing him. Avoiding the calls does nothing, they just call again.

Quote from zolttt : sports radio channels are on the lower bandwidth channels, so they sound a little worse than music channels. But I too have never had any sound quality issues, and I consider myself to be a little bit of an audiophile... I dont even understand what sound quality issues people are talking about ? if you are transmitting your XM over a transmitter, or listen on 3g... it wont sound all that great

Not sure if it's the stations I listen to, but Hair Nation and some of the other channels around it sound overly compressed. I purchased a lifetime subscription in 2007 and it seems like it has gotten worse. I'm currently using a Sportster 5 receiver with a 3.5mm connection to the aux input on my car stereo. I also use it with a home dock and the portable boombox. My wife has it on her factory installed car stereo. Yes, the argument could be made that the source material was recorded that way, which wouldn't be inaccurate, but I'm convinced the sound quality has declined. Despite that, we still love to use it for long road trips.

Those must be Howard's vacation dates

Quote from zolttt : sports radio channels are on the lower bandwidth channels, so they sound a little worse than music channels. But I too have never had any sound quality issues, and I consider myself to be a little bit of an audiophile... I dont even understand what sound quality issues people are talking about ? if you are transmitting your XM over a transmitter, or listen on 3g... it wont sound all that great

If you think Sirius/XM doesn't have SQ issues, then you aren't even remotely an audiophile. The fidelity is roughly on par with a poorly encoded 64kbps mp3, and some of the music stations are even transmitting in mono (!) now. It's awful. What was passable in 2001-2005 is not acceptable in 2013, with smartphones and 4G connections. The Internet streaming version of Sirius/XM is slightly more acceptable, but it still doesn't approach Pandora/Spotify quality.

The problem seems to be that they are overloading their limited bandwith with pointless stations, like those artist-only ones and the endless talk stations.

My wife LOVES having factory installed XM in her car. We live in an area that you get 1 station each genre (Pop, Rock, Classic Rock, Country, etc), so this gives her a lot more variety.

However, if she had an Aux input in the radio, I am sure she could live without it.

Free is the only way I'll listen; and then only for a while because the compression just sounds like crap.

If you buy at all; you buy Sirius/XM for it's content, definitely not for its fidelity.

Quote from nojmplease : it's becoming a harder and harder argument to justify spending $13+/month on sat radio.

I was a XM then Sirus/XM customer since its Sept 11, 2001 launch (yep, bad timing), and I bailed on it last year. However, I never paid full price for a subscription after the initial term, and never should anyone else. Sirius will give you 6 months for $25 every time you call customer service and ask. I did this for years, or some similar variation (they had 5 months for $20, etc). But in 10 years, Sirus/XM never improved their product. In fact, they started off with DJ managed stations, with people who had great depth of knowledge in their genre, but after the merger, many of these people were fired or left during cost cutting. They moves to recorded loops or low-dollar, low knowledge DJs and playlists.

In the end, I found Spotify and Pandora to have better stations, for free. Spotify has much better sound quality (streams to 190 bitrate). Free Pandora isn't great, you need Pandora One for higher sound quality, but it's as good as Sirius.