spdrcr5
06-17-2006, 10:14 PM
They were giving out 1,000 XM Radios to listen to the coverage on for free for the day. I grabbed one to see how the coverage was and to see what XM was like. The radio was a Pioneer Inno. Very nice device, had many quirks and certainly not worth the $399 retail for it. The battery life simply SUCKED! It lasted less than 5 hours, it was supposed to last the entire day. The Golf coverage on their golf channel where they had reporters and anchors, etc all over Winged Foot was pathetic. They didn't have any coverage at all of anyone until the top10 pairs teed off. I only found that out by asking someone else that had one of the radios. All I heard were commercials and the announcers talking about 2 or 3 players on the practice range then the announcers taking calls and people making predictions on who they think would win. lol what a waste of a channel and opportunity to actually give complete coverage of a tournament, something nobody else actually does.
I began flipping around to the other channels to see what the service was like. Some of the music and comedy channels were similar to what Sirius offers, but the biggest difference was how much more the DJ's talk and the commercials on the music channels! It annoyed me but it really upset my 12 yr old niece. She kept telling me how she liked listening to the radio in my Element because there weren't commercials. I didn't even ask her for any feedback, just handed her the Inno to listen to since the Golf "coverage" was unlistenable.
To be fair, I didn't listen to the music channels or other channels for very long. I was there to watch the golf and was mostly interested in hearing the golf coverage that XM was offering. I was bitterly disappointed in their lack of coverage. I saw multiple XM reporters throughout the day following players around and none of them seemed to be doing much reporting. Very sad attempt at covering a major sporting event.
Edit: Forgot to add something about the Inno that in my mind shows it will have a short lifespan and make even more costly to someone buying it. It becomes very, very hot to the touch within 10 minutes and continues to get hotter the longer it remains on. My iPod which is constantly using it's hard drive remains fairly cool to the touch. The Inno wasn't even using it's internal storage, I was only using the radio.
I also just went looking for some spec's on the Inno and discovered it only has 5.5 hours if all you do is listen to the XM Radio, but 10 hours if listening to MP3's! That doesn't make sense to me, but whatever. 10 hours of MP3 and 5.5 hours for XM for $399... not worth it. Plus you get to have burning hot device on your hip or arm... but something else or wait for something that works better.
I began flipping around to the other channels to see what the service was like. Some of the music and comedy channels were similar to what Sirius offers, but the biggest difference was how much more the DJ's talk and the commercials on the music channels! It annoyed me but it really upset my 12 yr old niece. She kept telling me how she liked listening to the radio in my Element because there weren't commercials. I didn't even ask her for any feedback, just handed her the Inno to listen to since the Golf "coverage" was unlistenable.
To be fair, I didn't listen to the music channels or other channels for very long. I was there to watch the golf and was mostly interested in hearing the golf coverage that XM was offering. I was bitterly disappointed in their lack of coverage. I saw multiple XM reporters throughout the day following players around and none of them seemed to be doing much reporting. Very sad attempt at covering a major sporting event.
Edit: Forgot to add something about the Inno that in my mind shows it will have a short lifespan and make even more costly to someone buying it. It becomes very, very hot to the touch within 10 minutes and continues to get hotter the longer it remains on. My iPod which is constantly using it's hard drive remains fairly cool to the touch. The Inno wasn't even using it's internal storage, I was only using the radio.
I also just went looking for some spec's on the Inno and discovered it only has 5.5 hours if all you do is listen to the XM Radio, but 10 hours if listening to MP3's! That doesn't make sense to me, but whatever. 10 hours of MP3 and 5.5 hours for XM for $399... not worth it. Plus you get to have burning hot device on your hip or arm... but something else or wait for something that works better.