All XM/Sirius receivers since the 2nd generation on support each other's satellites. This was part of an agreement the FCC brokered in 2000 in order to insure that if one ever took over the other (or a bankruptcy took place) the players would continue working. So once the merger takes place, they can enable any receiver (except the really really old 1st gen units) to receive any satellite they want via a simple software upgrade.
They may or may not support the competitor's satellites (not sure if you were BSing with that one, but since the bands are so close, I wouldn't be surprised if they could tune to both), but older devices will most certainly NOT be dual-band compatible. Why? Sirius and XM use VERY different codecs, and almost all receivers use hardware chips to decode the data streamed from the satellite into audio. Incompatible codecs = incompatible receivers.
And the only receivers that can receive firmware upgrades are the portables (on the XM side, the Inno, Nexus, and Helix, and on the Sirius side, the S50 and Stiletto family). Older XM units MIGHT be able to download codec updates OTA, but as far as I can tell, that was only used once way back a few months after launch to clean up some bugs in the decode chip - downloading a whole new codec would be a no go.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Derek @ Apr 26th 2008 11:40PM
Will this be the first unit to support both XM and Sirius? I guess time shall tell...
Rick @ Apr 27th 2008 5:34PM
All XM/Sirius receivers since the 2nd generation on support each other's satellites. This was part of an agreement the FCC brokered in 2000 in order to insure that if one ever took over the other (or a bankruptcy took place) the players would continue working. So once the merger takes place, they can enable any receiver (except the really really old 1st gen units) to receive any satellite they want via a simple software upgrade.
Libb @ Apr 28th 2008 4:26AM
They may or may not support the competitor's satellites (not sure if you were BSing with that one, but since the bands are so close, I wouldn't be surprised if they could tune to both), but older devices will most certainly NOT be dual-band compatible. Why? Sirius and XM use VERY different codecs, and almost all receivers use hardware chips to decode the data streamed from the satellite into audio. Incompatible codecs = incompatible receivers.
And the only receivers that can receive firmware upgrades are the portables (on the XM side, the Inno, Nexus, and Helix, and on the Sirius side, the S50 and Stiletto family). Older XM units MIGHT be able to download codec updates OTA, but as far as I can tell, that was only used once way back a few months after launch to clean up some bugs in the decode chip - downloading a whole new codec would be a no go.