Hesitance.

Ever since the dawn of the XM and Sirius radio business models, I’ve always asked myself, “why on Earth would anyone want to pay for radio?“.  After all, I had a six-mile commute to work, and you couldn’t take it inside with you and get a signal, so you’re essentially paying X amount per month to listen to the radio about 20 minutes a day.  I mean, what’s the deal?  I’ve already got a FREE radio, not to mention 16 Gigabytes of MP3′s on a USB stick connected to it.  If that gets old, I can even fire up Bluetooth on my iPhone and stream music straight from it so… What’s the big deal… right?

For a 10 minute commute every day, the logic above is fairly flawless.  Lately however, my weekly commute changed to about 3.5 hours each way, twice a week.  During which, I’m constantly searching for local radio stations on the way to and fro.  I’ve heard every song that I own on my USB stick until I’m pretty much ready to throw it away, and I’m bored to death about mile 47 of my 170 mile sojourn.

Enter the XM Skydock..

The XM Skydock is — in essence — an XM receiver that doubles as both an iPhone dock and charger.  As you can see by this picture, it plugs into the cigarette lighter, then the iPhone (or iPod touch) docks at the top of a semi-rigid stalk, allowing the interface software application to be in easy reach while driving.

In the Box..

When you first open the box, what you see is the receiver stalk.  There are also a couple of spacers for differing levels of iPod/iPhone cases, a manual, a quick start sheet, a channel guide for XM radio, an “AUX” cable to provide direct audio to capable players, and the magnetic antenna which is the most difficult part of the “easy” installation.

Installation…

The box describes the installation of this system as “simple and easy”.  For the most part, I agree, with one caveat.

1. plug in the stalk into a cigarette lighter
2. download the iphone/ipod app
3. Activate your service with XM radio
4. type in the UID/password into the app
5. set your radio to the correct channel (or plug in the provided AUX cable)
6. .. and finally, learn all about the magic of how to route the wiring of an externally mounted antenna — which looks like a baby “wall wart” charger — through your door’s weather stripping (without destroying it) then through the dash to hide the wires..

For step 6, most people of average intelligence will probably want to go ahead and hire out your local audio installer geek for help.  Better $20 to him than $200 to replace the weather strip and a mangled antenna.

Special consideration: When I first plugged up the system, I thought it would be a simple task to simply toss the antenna up on the dashboard and drive.  After all, the dash has an unobstructed view of the sky.. Right?  Apparently not..

Seems that — unlike FM radio — satellite radio is very, very “line of sight” between the antenna and the satellite itself.  If, for example, you find yourself driving East and the satellite is “behind you”, the antenna is easily blocked by the roof of your vehicle and you get music that fades in and out randomly as the signal is lost.  Better to go ahead and mount it outside to get a clear view and just be done with it.

The Software…

Downloading the Sirius/XM Skydock application is pretty straight forward, like any other free app store app,  Just make sure you get the Skydock app and not the streaming app, which won’t work with the skydock.  I may provide pictures later, but there are plenty on google.

The interface for the software is seemingly very intuitive although sometimes a bit hard to read at arm’s length.  You can change channels, search, get weather reports, and even “tag” music you hear for later downloads in iTunes (for those of you who do such things).  I have no real complaints about the interface, and it would have been far better than trying to use the built-in interface of my Pioneer DEH-6100BT deck at 70 miles per hour.

In the End

The Good

• The sound quality is amazing when connected through the AUX cable (as opposed to using the built-in FM tuner)
• The variety of music and programs seems pretty good
• It’s a fairly simple system to install, only the antenna may trip you up.
• You can actually listen to the same program while driving for more than 20 minutes (when normal FM stations start to fade quickly)
• You can keep up to 12 favorite channels, making it relatively easy to find something to listen to.
• The software can even prompt you when your favorite programs or tagged artists start playing.

The Bad

• Installing the antenna is not for the meek.
• If you have an older car, like I do, the weight of the iPhone sometimes causes the entire interface to “rotate” (or better to say “fall”) out of position when you hit bumps in the road.
• Bumps in the road shake the iPhone, making it sometimes appear unreadable — depending on how much your highway department sucks that is..
• For someone with big hands, it’s easy to hit the wrong button sometimes, especially if you’re not concentrating on reaching for the screen.
• Some iPhone cases, such as my Speck ruggedized will “fit” but it’s very, very tight — even with the dock arms fully opened.  I don’t however want to trade out the life-saving thick rubber case protection for anything that might not survive my unerring tendency to drop the phone on concrete.
• Sometimes if you don’t dock it “just right”, the screen lock will engage and turn off the screen (which I don’t want).  That however may be case related.

The Ugly

• “Commercial free” is total and utter bullspit.  Music channels aren’t bad, but any of the talk, news, or other channels spend seemingly 40% of the time with the same “buy gold”, “get out of credit card debt” crap that you get on standard radio.  6 minutes of Glenn Beck.  4 minutes of listening to some maxi-zoom-dweebie tell me how to make my penis larger.

The commercials themselves are ALMOST enough to make me want to cancel XM radio.  On the bright side, there’s always a music channel you can swap to during the incessant and neverending commercials.  I would almost be willing to pay another $5.00 a month just to get rid of them.  Almost.

Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about it, but most of my negative emotions are about the overzealous commercials playing every 5 minutes.  Otherwise, I was able to drive that 3.5 hours this weekend and never listen to the same thing twice.

Love “Blue Collar Comedy” radio.  Love the “classics” channel where they replay 30′s and 40′s radio shows.  Love the “80′s on 8″ channel and for the first time, I am able to listen to the entire Glenn Beck show from start to finish.  Whether that’s a good or bad thing, dunno yet. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this review helped.  If you have questions, please feel free to drop us a line below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Wayne