Sitting in Washington traffic on a recent weekday morning with Broadway show tunes merrily wafting out of my car’s stereo, I decided to get a news update – and instantly tuned in the BBC from London. A few minutes later, I enjoyed a commercial-free flow of popular tunes from the 80’s before quickly switching over to a live news feed from CNBC.

This is the power of satellite radio, and after years of being limited to traditional radio stations and whatever recordings happen to be with me in the car, the immense array of choices with radio from space is dazzling.

Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio are not perfect, but either company’s pay-radio service is certainly worth considering as an alternative to AM, FM and CDs, as long as you're willing to pay.

Plan to pay anywhere from just over $100 to several hundred dollars for a receiver from either broadcaster. XM charges $9.95 per month for its service, while Sirius asks $12.95. Both offer discounts if you want service on more than one receiver or if you’re willing to pre-pay for multiple months in advance.

The companies are for the most part very much alike, so your choice of one satellite radio service over the other is likely to be driven by relatively small details, such as whether a channel you just can’t live without is on one but not the other.

100 choices

Both systems offer about 100 channels conveniently arranged by the type of music or other programming they offer. Each features dozens of music stations produced in-house by their own DJs and program directors.

XM has a category called Decades, for instance, that includes channels playing only music from the 40s, 90s, or any decade between. Sirius’ Dance category includes six channels dedicated to club music. Both offer rock, classical, jazz and pop, among other genres.

Space Age Hardware Sirius subscribers can buy this Kenwood in-dash TV-style receiver with motorized, touch-sensitive screen. The new Streamer portable Plug & Play receiver from Sirius is tailored for the trucker market. XM's Delphi SKYFi Radio, above, can be popped into a boombox-like unit (right) or be used with a home or car stereo. Not shown with either unit is the required antenna, about the size of a tennis ball.

In addition to using a lot of recorded material, both companies bring musicians in and broadcast their performances.

None of the Sirius music channels – or streams, as the company likes to say – have commercials, something the company says justifies a higher subscription price than XM. But while some XM channels have commercial interruptions, the ads are far less frequent than on many traditional radio stations, where 15 minutes of every hour, or even more, are taken up by marketing pitches.

Some XM and Sirius channels are rebroadcasts of material from other sources. Both companies carry audio feeds of TV channels like CNBC, CNN Headline News, Fox News Channel and ESPN.

If you enjoy wall-to-wall news or sports coverage, the ability to pull in any of these channels on the go may be reason alone to get a satellite radio subscription.

Home or auto

Perhaps the fastest way to begin enjoying satellite radio is to buy a portable unit and plug it in whenever you choose. It can be connected to a home stereo or used in your car.

XM and Sirius both offer receivers that use a cigarette lighter for power and a cassette deck to transmit sound to your vehicle’s speakers. Stick a mini magnetic antenna on the roof, and you’re in business.

XM’s SkyFi receiver, from Delphi -- which I tried – works in a car, can be attached to the input jack on a home stereo or clicks into a special boombox that can either plug into a wall outlet or work off a handful of batteries.

I also used Sirius’ Here2Anywhere receiver, a plug-and-play unit made by Kenwood that uses docks to work with a car stereo or any home audio system with an auxiliary input. Sirius plans to introduce its own version of the convenient satellite radio boombox later this year.

The problem using either of these receivers in the car is that they are cumbersome and inconvenient. You have to hide the radio and its accompanying wires when you leave your vehicle if you don’t want to encourage theft. And you have to set the whole thing up each time you want to use it.

A more elegant solution, if your car is where you most want satellite radio, is to have a unit permanently mounted in your vehicle. XM and Sirius have each signed up several large consumer electronics manufacturers to build radios equipped to receive their services, and these units are widely available in stores like Best Buy and Circuit City.

You also can buy a new vehicle with a satellite radio receiver installed at the factory or by a dealer. Sirius and XM both are counting on new-car buyers to draw large numbers of subscribers, especially as more vehicles begin to show up with satellite radios as standard features or options.

Most automakers that offer satellite radios are involved in exclusive arrangements with XM or Sirius. XM’s partners include General Motors, Honda, Nissan, Isuzu, Toyota and Audi, while Sirius is available in vehicles from Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, BMW, Jaguar, Volvo, Audi and Mazda.

Reception test

Once you have a unit in hand and have verified the availability of a signal using a meter on the receiver, all it takes is a call to a toll-free number to activate a subscription. Within a few minutes of setting up an account, you should have service.

In my tests, the XM and Sirius receivers both worked in cars without much of a hitch. I occasionally lost reception for brief moments beneath overpasses using both systems, but otherwise clarity and signal strength was sufficient virtually everywhere I took the radios. On a few occasions, sound on the XM radio was interrupted for a second or two for no apparent reason.

XM and Sirius both operate repeaters on the ground that retransmit satellite signals in an effort to overcome obstacles that may disrupt reception. XM’s repeater network is significantly larger than Sirius’ because of differences in the designs of the companies’ systems – and this seemed to make a difference.

It was difficult to get a strong signal indoors using the Sirius unit, even with the antenna placed at a window with a decent view of the sky. And the signals sometimes disappeared without warning, cutting off the audio and forcing me to re-aim the antenna.

The XM unit, by contrast, worked well nearly anywhere indoors, regardless of whether the antenna was within view of a satellite. However, a colleague who purchased an XM boombox setup says reception in the home is sometimes compromised if the antenna cannot get a somewhat unobstructed view of the southern sky. He found that reception typically stops completely if the unit is in the kitchen and the microwave oven is on. But he considers these minor inconveniences worth tolerating for the broad selection of targeted music channels.

Service details

Sirius does a better job providing programming information on the little screens that are common to all satellite radios. The Sirius screen scrolls lines of text and usually offered a pretty complete description of the current song and its artist, or other material. But the XM radio tended to truncate the information, sometimes making it difficult to identify what I was listening to.

What's On? Wynton Marsalis live at XM's studio. Pam Tillis live at Sirius' studio. XM Categories Decades music, country, hits, Christian, rock, urban, jazz & blues, dance, Latin, world, classical, kids, news, sports, comedy, talk. Sirius Categories Pop, rock, country, hip-hop, R&B, dance, jazz/standards, classical, variety, sports, news, entertainment. IMAGE CREDITS: XM (left); Sirius (right)

Sirius and XM take different approaches to providing service on personal computers.

XM sells a nifty device called the XM PCR that uses an antenna to pick signals up from the company’s satellites or repeaters, but the unit requires a separate subscription. On the plus side, this product does not require an Internet connection.

Sirius allows you to listen to any channel over the Internet as long as you have a subscription. This means you can listen to the company’s service anywhere you can connect to the Internet at a reasonable speed, even if you’re outside Sirius’ coverage area.

On the whole, satellite radio works well. The wide variety of choices and the ability to use either system nearly anywhere in the continental United States are big draws that could prove irresistible to many potential subscribers.

But a subscription to Sirius or XM may cause a problem: Dad might want to listen to the Hank Williams channel, while Mom wants nothing but Latin jazz and the teens fight over the Top 20 station and the rap channel. It's a dilemma XM and Sirius hope you're willing to pay for.

Yesterday's stories
Satellite Radio: Business is Booming
How Satellite Radio Works

Next in this Series, Wednesday, Nov. 19:
Satellite Television: The Players
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