DirecTV to offer XM broadcasts

Starting November 15th, DirecTV will begin offering almost 70 XM radio stations to its customers, replacing the current MusicChoice service, which is still available through several different content providers. Total Choice subscribers will receive 50 XM feeds, while the Total Choice Plus and Premiere packages will offer the full complement of 67 stations. DirecTV-heads will be able to find this new programming on channels 801 through 879 (yes, math whizzes, we know that's more than 67 channels; the leftovers are reserved for Spanish broadcasts and other such goodies).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[mdnetguru @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Dish Network has been offering Sirius for free for quite some time now.

[Andrew @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

That's too bad. DirecTV�s current music line up is pretty good. It's also near CD quality. XM radio though isn't. The last time I tried XM it sounded like 64kbps encoded MP3. Why is DirecTV doing this? If I wanted XM I would have gotten it separately.

[eric cumbee @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

XM sounds pretty good in my opinion, i have had it for almost a year and have been happy with it. sounds like a great addition to directv.

[Galley @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

It's too bad we won't get the Major League Baseball games. :-(

[Willy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

I'm excited about this. I'm sick of MusicChoice: their rotation is too light. If you listen to more than about 2 hours of any single channel, you hear the same songs again and again.

[Its_Me @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Nice. Now I can cancel XM @ home (already have Sirius in the car).

Just saved me $, thanks XM!

[Wayne @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

all i can think is directv is now much gooder with opie and anthony being broadcasted on it

[Kyle @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

OnA PARTY ROCK!!!

[Matt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Damnit, I completely prefer cable over satellite for a number of reasons, but it drives me nuts that I can't get NFL Sunday Ticket and now sat radio is being offered too? Cable needs to do something beyond on demand or they're going to cause this customer to reluctantly switch over.

[Skully @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Yes, DishNetwork has had Sirius music channels for quite some time now. Sirius is better anyways! Dig?

[Jeep Commander Forum @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

In response to #2

XM compresses the crap out of their stations so they can squeeze more channels into less frequency space. This is not an issue over DirecTV since they have setup aside frequency space for cd quality music. XM can provide them with a high quality signal that is not downsampled/compressed.

Wether DirecTV decides to "reutilize" some of this saved frequency during the transition is a possibility tho.

[r3z @ Dec 19th 2005 2:37AM]

Does anyone have a channel lineup for this as of yet?