Sirius to Go

Sirius Satellite Radio may be positioned to make the next great leap forward. In mid-May, Kenwood and Audiovox announced the first transportable receivers, which will let Sirius listeners enjoy the service wherever they go—home, office, boat, beach, etc—not only in the comfort of their cars.

Kenwood's "Here2Anywhere" model KTC-H2A1 and Audiovox's "Satellite Radio Shuttle" (SRS), both described as "plug and play" devices, will arrive at dealers during the last week of May. The new receivers have a feature called S-Seek that notifies listeners "when their favorite songs are playing on any of Sirius' 60 commercial-free music streams," according to a Sirius press release.

The Kenwood unit, priced at $99.95, allows users to capture as many as 24 song titles and artist names in its memory, a feature that could eventually boost CD sales, and also provides a real-time readout of song and artist while a tune is playing. Separate docking kits for home or car will sell for $69.95 each.

The Audiovox SRS has an ingenious RF relay feature in its SIR-CK1 automobile kit—an FM transmitter with four frequency adjustments incorporated into the docking station for a "wireless connection to virtually any vehicle radio." The transmitter would also presumably work with any FM tuner. It can capture the titles of up to 10 favorite songs and continually search all Sirius transmissions for them, prompting the listener whenever they appear. The Audiovox unit is priced like Kenwood's—MSRP is $99.95, with car dock and home dock priced at $69.99 and $89.99, respectively. The Kenwood and Audiovox products will be available at most mainstream electronics stores by June 1.

Sirius features 100 audio streams, including music in many genres, news, sports, comedy, and talk shows, for a monthly subscription price of $12.95. A lifetime subscription can be purchased for $399.99.

The growth of satellite radio comes at a time when listeners are growing increasingly unhappy with the homogenous sound of terrestrial broadcasting, a reality likely to be made worse by the impending liberalization of media ownership caps by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Last week, our Stereophile poll showed that 52% of our respondents listen to radio less now than they did five years ago, 19% listen the same amount, 19% listen more — and 7% told us they don't listen to radio at all.

X