Satellite Radio

Spire_Jeff · September 2004

Does anyone know of an XM or Sirius tuner that has RS232 or IP Control. Basically I want what the ADA Tune-Suite offers, but I am not sure that we can support bringing in the entire ADA line for one piece. Any ideas?

Jeff

Kaptain Kaos · September 2004

RS-232 Satellite Radio Tuner

Here is a link to three models.

http://www.sirius.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Sirius/CachedPage&c=Page&cid=1066068011203

DHawthorne · September 2004

The Onkyo Integra line includes some Net-Tune receivers (which may even use the Sirius network, I'm not certain). The Escient Fireball line can also access Sirius. The Integras are RS-232, and the Fireballs either RS-232 or IP.

Reese Jacobs · September 2004

Satellite Radio

Antex (www.antex.com) makes both Sirius and XM multi-zone tuners ideal for integration with Netlinx. Their triple-play units are 3 zone Sirius or XM (no mix and match). They have an RS-232 port and a very nice protocol (I did a Netlinx module for it and worked with them on asynchronous message extensions to the protocol). The units rack or shelf mount and are designed for the integrator marker. Reference modules and TP files are on InConcert.

ADA also makes an XM tuner for their TuneSuite product - not sure about whether they have or will have Sirius support.

Hope this helps.

Reese Jacobs · September 2004

Satellite Radio

Also, forgot to mention in the previous post that Sirius support in the Escient Fireball products has been discontinued. Escient and Sirius had an arrangement for access to Sirius radio streams but Sirius decided to move to a different subscription model and Escient had to change directions. Escient announced at CEDIA a new streaming radio format (Radioio) to replace the Sirius streaming capability..

Spire_Jeff · September 2004

Thanks for all of the great info. I am sure we will be able to find atleast one product that works for us.

Thanks again,

Jeff

shr00m-dew · October 2004

Polk will be releasing a XM model next year that has RS232 support.. Will be available to Polk dealers and maybe others?

Pretty cool as it has a video out to show all the info on screen

Kevin D.

TurnipTruck · December 2004

It's funny that there are "high end" tuners coming out for satellite radio, when the available sound quality is limited to the low bitrates used to deliver the programming. The sound quality of satellite radio has been a large disappointment for me. I could not see using a $1,500 device to tune in lifeless sounding audio streams!

Spire_Jeff · December 2004

I agree on the sound quality. Music from satellite is bearable, but talk radio is painful to listen to. But, some of our clients want satellite radio and they want to control it through their AMX panels.

Jeff

P.S.
My boss absolutely loves his satellite radio in his car and he loves it. So, everyone hears what they want.... just like some people think a cheap plasma looks as good as a Fujitsu

Chip Moody · December 2004

It's not always about the quality, y'know - there is the content factor. Not enough for me personally to dish out $10 a month, but I can understand how a lot of people would be into it.

- Chip

Originally posted by TurnipTruck
It's funny that there are "high end" tuners coming out for satellite radio, when the available sound quality is limited to the low bitrates used to deliver the programming. The sound quality of satellite radio has been a large disappointment for me. I could not see using a $1,500 device to tune in lifeless sounding audio streams!

TurnipTruck · December 2004

The XM content was very good, but I had to had to express my displeasure with the quality of the sound capitalistically, by cancelling my subscription.

It has been, and continues to be proven that more people would prefer a quantity of mediocre quality than a smaller amount of high quality.

XM and Sirius could bring their quality up to a closer-to-CD level by cutting their amount of channels in half thereby doubling the amount of bandwidth deliveing the remaining channels. They both announced that they will be doing that when pigs become visible flying over the moon.

My 128-192K MP3 CDs sound worlds better than satellite radio. They are what I will be listening to at least for the near future.

My 2 cents.... OK, 3.

ondrovic · August 2006

shr00m-dew wrote:

Polk will be releasing a XM model next year that has RS232 support.. Will be available to Polk dealers and maybe others?

Pretty cool as it has a video out to show all the info on screen

Kevin D.

I have just put one of these ( XRt12 ) into a clients house and love it so far but am running into a little issues. Working with Polk audio Tech support getting it worked out. I would reccommend this to any one because its not all that expensive.

shr00m-dew · August 2006

ondrovic wrote:

Working with Polk audio Tech support getting it worked out. I would reccommend this to any one because its not all that expensive.

Yeah good luck with that. Let me know if they do anything other then the Jedi mind trick "no your not having that problem".

I've talked to the head of the tech department last year at CES, I've bombarded my rep, etc.. No help.

Major problem is that as soon as you send any RS232 string, it resets the video information to the center of the screen. It takes a while for it to start jumping around again(to avoid burn in). Well if you request song/channel info every 30 seconds or so the text is always centered on the screen. The will burn a POLK AUDIO logo into any plasma pretty quick.

I requested that data REQUESTS to the unit not change the screen-saver timeout. I was told they didn't have that issue and to upgrade the firmware. Well we had a first run unit that couldn't be upgraded via RS232. So they send a new unit out as replacement.

The new unit DOES THE SAME THING, and on top of that they changed the way they terminated the feedback. So I had to go in and change my code to again get channel /song feedback. I asked them if there was a way to change the feedback back to the old way and was told "we never changed it, it must be something in your program". The only thing that changed was the XM unit, but it must be my fault.

Sorry for the rant. I've had to just put the display on the "off except when changing" mode and keep the front of the unit out of reach.

Kevin D.

ondrovic · August 2006

shr00m-dew wrote:

Yeah good luck with that. Let me know if they do anything other then the Jedi mind trick "no your not having that problem".

I've talked to the head of the tech department last year at CES, I've bombarded my rep, etc.. No help.

Major problem is that as soon as you send any RS232 string, it resets the video information to the center of the screen. It takes a while for it to start jumping around again(to avoid burn in). Well if you request song/channel info every 30 seconds or so the text is always centered on the screen. The will burn a POLK AUDIO logo into any plasma pretty quick.

I requested that data REQUESTS to the unit not change the screen-saver timeout. I was told they didn't have that issue and to upgrade the firmware. Well we had a first run unit that couldn't be upgraded via RS232. So they send a new unit out as replacement.

The new unit DOES THE SAME THING, and on top of that they changed the way they terminated the feedback. So I had to go in and change my code to again get channel /song feedback. I asked them if there was a way to change the feedback back to the old way and was told "we never changed it, it must be something in your program". The only thing that changed was the XM unit, but it must be my fault.

Sorry for the rant. I've had to just put the display on the "off except when changing" mode and keep the front of the unit out of reach.

Kevin D.

Yeah I am noticing that the tech support isn't the greatest. I have called them twice and sent two emails with no luck. All I wanted to know was two simple things but haven't heard back from them yet.

1. Wanted to know if there was an rs232 command to switch between direct / preset mode

2. Wanted to have a direct channel input via rs232 so if you hit 1 2 3 it would go to channel 123

On the second one I cheated a bit and did that part via ir works a little but not all that great . Still waiting to hear back from them on that one considering when I talked to tech support they siad it wasn't implemented yet.....

Thanks for the info Kevin.

Cheers

Chris Ondrovic

shr00m-dew · August 2006

There's a direct channel input but you have to hold the value in netlinx before sending.

Just have a pop up keypad and parse the channel number after they hit enter:

CASE IA_XM:
	    {
		SELECT
                {
                    ACTIVE (LENGTH_STRING(XM_DIRECT)=1):
                    {
                        SEND_STRING XM,"'ChannelSelect 00',XM_DIRECT,13"
                    }
                    ACTIVE (LENGTH_STRING(XM_DIRECT)=2):
                    {
                        SEND_STRING XM,"'ChannelSelect 0',XM_DIRECT,13"
                    }
                    ACTIVE (LENGTH_STRING(XM_DIRECT)=3):
                    {
                        SEND_STRING XM,"'ChannelSelect ',XM_DIRECT,13"
                    }
                }
                XM_DIRECT='000'
		WAIT 10
                CALL 'XM_UPDATE'
	    }

Satellite Radio

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