Sirius' on-again, off-again signal problems
(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)
Sirius Satellite Radio has a lot on its plate. Shock jock Howard Stern is already making noises about leaving after his contract expires in a couple of years, the stock price is in the tank, and the company has huge debt.
All of that shouldn't matter to subscribers, of which I am one. But the frequent signal dropouts are really getting out of hand.
I had similar problems in the early days, but after a while, the dropouts became rare. Months would go by without signal interruptions, but about six months ago, the off-and-on signal problems returned.
Sometimes, the dropout lasts just a few seconds but occurs many times an hour. My Sirius home radio hasn't budged since I first got it many years ago, and my antenna is pretty much in the same place it has always been, but lately, the signal regularly disappears for minutes at a time before sputtering back to life.
When the radio drops out, the tuner's display reads "Acquiring Signal," which in and of itself is really annoying. The fact is, it's not acquiring signal; that's why I'm not hearing anything. I'm guessing that these dropout problems are related to the ground repeaters used in metropolitan areas. I'm in the Brooklyn borough of New York.
My attempts to speak with a Sirius representative didn't get very far. I received a response via e-mail saying this: "It's not unusual for people at home to experience reception issues because of a faulty antenna or some terrestrial interference."
I swapped out the antenna, and it didn't make a difference.
How about you? Has your Sirius service held up over the years?
Side note: Jay Thomas, on Channel 108 (Sirius XM Stars Too) is the funniest man on radio. It seems as if whatever is running through his head on any given day is hilarious. While Howard Stern seems dried up and bored with himself, Thomas is a breath of fresh air.
Steve Guttenberg is a frequent contributor to magazines and Web sites including Home Entertainment, Playback, and Ultimate AV. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
Although I love Sirius I am strongly considering not renewing when it runs out. Tech support at Sirius is very poor - they also told me it was an antenna problem (bought a new one - same problem) a problem with the receiver (bought a new one, same problem). It is a transmission problem - I live in Soho in NYC. It is very, very annoying (and primitive in this digital era!!)
Jay Thomas is good, but Covino and Rich (on 108 noon to 3) are better!
Howard Stern has been the greatest radio entertainer that has ever lived. Greatest interviewer ever. Most innovative man who single-handedly changed the world. There was a day when interviewers would never ask a celebrity about their love life. Howard changed that and now it's a daily event on Access Hollywood.
You like Jay Thomas? Good for you but here's a reality check. He's on radio because his career is on the down-slide. It's what he's doing so he doesn't starve to death. Nobodies asking him to be on TV. Nobodies trying to steal him from Sirius...
Howard is neither dried up or bored. You're just a dimwit with a lousy sense of humor.
Stern is tired, tiresome and irrelevant. Steve, on the other hand, is right. Thomas is funnier and better - and who cares what his career is doing?
And I get the "acquiring signal" message not infrequently and often for no apparent reason.
Scott A.
Watertown NY
Sirius Backspin was eliminated completely! Only after public outcry is it being restored in the middle of this month....
Heart and Soul (Sirius 51) has turned into a Ballad station - there is an entire genre of music from R&B that was heard on 51 that is gone!
Even their premier programming stinks! The Jamie Foxx channel (which is the only reason i kept the service after the merger) would air more comedy than music. Now, you hear more music than comedy.
Where i was a sirius addict and applauded the merger i now find myself furious and disappointed in my car. I also find myself going back to traditional radio because this merger was a blank bill of goods. The programming stinks and i am getting to the point where i want it out of my car.
Whoever decided the programming should be fired upon sight.
I'm sorry, a 24-hour AC/DC channel for 4 months? The only station that I listened to that didn't change much was Liquid Metal. Everything else, Comedy, Classic Rock, 80's Metal all got worse, and they eliminated the Punk channel (Fungus) completely.
It was a good ride while it lasted.
I've also noticed that Sirius doesn't seem to have terrestrial repeaters like XM had. Driving around San Francisco I often lose signal. I didn't have that issue with XM.
i have a sirius capable radio...(the kenwood dvd one)
and have no interest in getting it activated....
want to know why?
because no matter what radio it is its gonna play songs you don't want to hear or lose signal at some point
last i checked my ipod hasn't ever lost a signal or played music i don't want to hear.
It would seem that the signal dropouts I experience are usually when there are cops in the area. After a few times I started noting when I'd seen a cop in the area. After days of tinkering with this I found cop that had the radio in his cruiser and he to said that when hes using the radar gun on traffic the signal drops in and out. Now I don't understand how these bands could be interfering since I'm not a physicist but I am a biologist and observed this and even have found some raw data to backup the issue.
Ultimately the radio was a gift from my fiancee which she thought was a great idea and I too thought so until I hooked it up and used it for a few days. The problems I have with this radio are not the dropouts but what the actual radio offers the listeners. I thought I would have a wide variety of radio stations to listen to while driving long hours on the highway but in the end all we have are a few music stations that I would tolerate for awhile and a ton of trash and news stations which by the way they make up for on commercials....... commercial free my ass.
I was never so pissed off when listening to CNN and a commercial breaks the middle of a news segment to advertise a new Sirius plan. ***? Considering how much money this whole thing cost us and how much I can pay for an average music CD, I think this is my first and last time using this system.
There should be a huge variety of stations and music to choose from. I can't blame Stern for leaving.
While it is possible that the radar gun the cop uses can have radiation leaking out of it that can interfere with his XM/Sirrus receiver in his car; which means he should get that gun checked out! It's unlikely the the emissions from that gun can be directly interfering with the receiver in your car. Police radar guns work in the range of 10.525 GHz or 24.15 GHz. XM and Sirrus use 2.333 GHz and 2.325 GHz respectively. The different frequencies do not interact with one another; not even when they hit the same antenna and one is much more powerful than the other. To make the point better, currently, satellite TV, and GPS signals do not use the same frequencies as XM (or eachother) and do not interfere. Terrestrial radio/TV is also very close if frequency, and yet do not interfere. Looking at XM and Sirrus, as I note above, they use fairly close frequencies, but there is no interference. The difference between them is wide enough, as with TV/Radio stations, to prevent interference from something called side bands which I won't bore you with an explanation of. The point is that your XM/Sirrus system is "deaf" to the police radar unless the power is so great that it would physically burn the antenna which is what the USAF is building with it's airborne laser project.
I would love to see this raw data, but basically the only problem that could happen is if your XM/Sirrus receiver was designed in such a way as to be able to "hear" and react to those frequencies.
More than enough to unlock the phase loop detector in a Sirius/XM radio for a period of time until it can gain enough signal to lock again.
But speed guns are not the only source of RF interference for Sirius/XM there are also the WiFi bands that are in the neighborhood of 2.4GHz and of course they are always changing state (off->on & on->off) so they too are sources of wideband noise, surely enough to interfere with the Sirius/XM spectrum.
My suggestion to Sirius/XM radio users is to find some of these sources and see how well they can receive near the presence of these signals.
BTW - Microwave ovens are very powerful sources of microwave interference as well as microwave circuit links for anything from the Telcos to Remote TV Vans to studio to transmission tower links.
It is quite possible that when you have a drop off that you are driving through a microwave signal path and as far as the low signal levels that could either be caused by wideband noise eminating from any of the above sources.
Try taking your receiver far out into the country where you don't see any airports, houses, or microwave repeaters (including cell towers) and I think you will see tha the signal strength is higher due to a higher signal-noise ratio.
I was an "early adopter" of Sirius in Denver many years ago. Back then, I experienced a lot of drop-outs, but attributed them more to the technology of the time than anything else. The last few years (after buying newer receivers/antennas) I've had almost no problems at all with signal drop-outs, except in mountain tunnels or if I'm stuck under large overpasses for extended lengths of time.
The last few months- drop-outs have been a daily occurrence. Just this morning- I lost signal at least twice for 5-10 seconds at a time on my way into work. I was driving on "open" freeways without any major geographic or man-made barriers to the satellite signals, and I wasn't surrounded by semi-trucks or anything else that might have caused them.
I had heard Sirius was shutting down some of their terrestrial repeaters, but that shouldn't affect actual satellite reception. I think something is either going wrong with one of their satellites, or they are having major problems on the production/transmission end.
2. I have been listening to to Howard Stern off and on for over 10 years and he is better then ever. Personally, I don't know anyone who would disagree.
When this was really bad a couple years ago I finally called customer service to complain: I was on the road most of the day and had no signal at all most of the time. The "tech" kept telling me to change the antenna position, and I kept explaining to HIM that it was a car and the position changes constantly. I mentioned the rumors about repeater problems and he said there was no problem at all.
Fast-forward 2 years, and now it's almost as bad as it was then.
However, my current complaint is the playlists on my favorite stations has changed quite a bit since the merge with XM, for the worse, not better.
- by stoobush January 14, 2009 9:27 AM PST
- Here in MD, the only place I have problems is in downtown Kensington, which seems to need a repeater of its own. I've got one of the first-gen Clarion receivers and antennas, and it still gets great signal everywhere.
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Showing 1 of 4 pages (109 Comments)I imagine I'm one of the few people who was pleased by the new Sirius/XM lineup. All of my favorite stations (80s, The Pulse, Spectrum, Alt Nation, First Wave, Coffeehouse, & Broadway) stayed put or were replaced by superior XM analogues (XMU for Left of Center, Bluesville for Blues). Plus we got my favorite XM station, The Loft. I can see, however, why XM fans would lament the loss of Fred. Similarly, Hockey and NBA fans must be pretty pissed at the new Sirius sports lineup, but as long as we've got Sirius NFL, I'm content.