techMology
Member
Although Sirius and XM have merged into one company, the satellite orbital locations and how they work are totally different. XM uses geostationary satellites (3) located above the equator. Sirius has non-stationary satellites that orbit over the United States and their paths converge over the northern Midwest. Therefore, XM works much better in the southern latitudes and Sirius works best in the northern latitudes. If you have a fixed antenna, XM wants you to point it south, Sirius wants you to point it towards Minnesota. East-west roads in northern latitudes are a problem for XM because the elevation of the satellites are very low. Any trees on the side of the road will block the signal---not so bad with Sirius. It's too bad there isn't an option to choose which receiver to have installed in your vehicle when you purchase it.
Not for long. They are dumping the HEO orbit that Sirius used in favour of the geostationary orbit XM (and virtually all other satellite broadcasters) uses.
I've noticed more dropouts on XM versus my old Sirius equipped car, but nothing too horrendous. However, it's winter. Once the leaves appear I may be more cranky.
The audio codec XM uses (AAC) is much better than what Sirius is using (PAC) to my ears - I've always felt that way. When they finally merge the spectrum and they migrate to AAC only I'm hoping they up the quality of the stream rather than cram more content down the pipe.