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The choice between Sirius or XM should come down to what your strongest personal interests are. Each service offers great music programming with some minor differences in how it separates genres. Sirius music channels are 100% commercial free whereas XM has a few music stations with commercials. News, talk and entertainment channels are also pretty similar and generally all have regular radio commercial schedules. Sirius also offers exclusive artist channels for the Who, Rolling Stones, Jimmy Buffett, and Elvis.

It is the unique content that should be the driving influence in your decision. The biggest names in each service would be Howard Stern, Playboy, and Martha Stewart on Sirius, and Opie & Anthony, Ellen, and Oprah on XM. The Oprah channel on XM is not really Oprah as you would expect. It is Oprah approved content with a weekly 30 minute conversation between Oprah and her friend Gayle. By comparison, Martha Stewart's channel features many Martha Stewart programs along with approved content. Howard Stern has 2 channels on Sirius. The first channel is his daily show replayed all day and the second channel is a mixture of various other personalities and specials.

If your husband is a sports fan, this is also where the services are separated. XM offers Major League Baseball, NHL, IRL, PGA Tour golf, and some college football(ACC, Big 10, Big East, Pac 10. Sirius has NHL through this season before it moves to XM. The NFL, NBA, NASCAR, Wimbledon, English Premier soccer, UEFA Champions league soccer, and colle sports from Pac 10, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Ivy League, and Notre Dame. In many cases, you can get the home or away broadcasts from each provider.

Both services offer online streaming of their music channels and select content channels for free online. I have seen both players in operation online and would give the edge to XM in that respect, but Sirius is not far behind and is just as easy to use.

Pricing for equipment and services are virtually the same for each and the quality of service and equipment is high. Wherever you purchase your equipment from, make sure you get all the features you need from the right device. Neither provider has equipment without an equivalent from the other provider as well.

I personally have Sirius, but have friends and family with XM. I recommend either service to anyone and base my recommendation on what exclusive content is most important to that person. Satellite radio is the future of radio and is superior to terrestrial radio in every respect except cost.

Learn more about this author, Patrick Lynch.
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