Crutchfield has won the Sirius Satellite Smackdown, and we’re now the proud owners of a JVC Sirius Satellite Boombox. And our education was just beginning.
Our XM radio boombox and antenna perform well with the antenna facing generally south and east. We have a vaulted ceiling, with the associated high windows, in our TV room, and have been very pleased with XM’s performance.
Sirius wants to face north or west. No problem, I thought, we’ll just angle the palm-sized antenna for that one off to the north. No soap. A signal can be obtained, but for a short duration. We moved the rig to every room in the house over the weekend, with the same results. Putting the antenna on the patio table, and running the wire through the patio doors worked wonders, but clearly is not a viable solution in the long term.
Five minutes of interweb related research revealed that Sirius satellites aren’t in a stationary orbit; one forum claimed that their three satellites make a kind of figure-8 in the sky. Oops, looks like an in-house antenna probably isn’t going to cut it. An additional few minutes of shopping turned up the Terk SIR6 outdoor antenna, and the Sirius DBS/Radio combiner/splitter system. The fine folks at Crutchfield were most patient in discussing my dilemma, and said that, yea verily, both components are compatible with my radio. The combo splitter is a great thing; we can run the DirectTV and Sirius signals down the same hunk of coax outside, split them inside the house, and direct radio stuff to the radio, and TV stuff to the teevee. This will save me putting a hole from outside to inside to run the radio cable. So I unpacked those items tonight, to discover that the combo/splitter has a *huge* powerpack, which is going to upset the power distribution in the entertainment rack, every outlet therein being used and all.
Add to that the fact that the outside antenna and splitter cost a little more than the radio did after rebate, and I’ll be marveling at technology up to the time next month’s AmEx bill comes in.
At least Crutchfield is a great place with which to do business. I’d recommend them to anyone.
-k-
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