Review: Sprint Radio VS Sirius

[mas90guru]

After not finding my information on how Sprint Radio compares to Sirius, I decided I'd subscribe and make a note of my findings for other users.

First, the big question most people have is why would I listen to radio via my phone when it's free over my computer or via an existing satellite subscription.

The times when I listen are generally when I'm not close to a radio -- either waiting somewhere or out taking a walk.

So this whole radio over the phone isn't for everyone. For those that are curious, here are my observations:

COST:

SPRINT RADIO - $ 5.95/mo - 50 channels
Sirius RADIO - $ 6.95/mo - 20 channels

DIFFERENCES:

Sprint Radio displays a screen showing the song that is being played - title and album art. The album art is not very high resolution so you can't get too excited over this feature alone. It's nice though to be able to look and see the title of the song that is playing. When the flip on my Sanyo 8400 is closed, the music continues to play however the outer display does NOT show any song titles.

Sprint Radio plays the music with gaps of silence between tracks. Sirius is more of a radio experience, with the music smoothly transitioning between one song and another. With Sprint you have GAPS between the music tracks.

Sirius channels do NOT give any indication of the track/artist being played - you get a blue screen with no information.



CHANNEL LINEUP

SPRINT

WHATS HOT- Half dozen videos

MUSIC VIDEOS
-Reggae
-Reggaeton
-Latin Pop
-Country
-Dance
-Salsa and Merrangae
-ReggaeClassics

YOUTH MUSIC
-Radio Disney

SPORTS
-ESPN Live Radio
-Celebrity Talk Show (James Brown / Tony Bruno)
-Interviews

PUBLIC RADIO
-NPR

NEWS/WEATHER
-The World (PRI)

==MUSIC==
URBAN
-Todays Hip Hop
-2006 Best Hip Hop
-The Joint
-Breakdown FM
-Underground Hip
-The Streetz
-Exclusive TRAX
-FocusOnTheDJ (4 different mix station - Reggae/Reggaeton/Hip Hop/Mash Up)
-Old School (Foundation,Throwback,Millenium)
-Neo Soul (Organic Soul, Soul Purpose)
-News & Entertainment (Interview, Hip Hop News)

POP
-Weekly hot 20
-2007 Grammy Nominees
-New Releases
-Todays Top Hits
-2000's Pop

LATIN
-Latin Hits 2006
-Latin POP
-Latin Rock
-Reggaeton
-FocusontheDJ

ROCK
-Todays Rock
-Top Rock of 2006
-Alternative/Indie
-90's Grunge
-Classic 70's Rock
-Latin Rock

REGGAE
-FocusontheDJ
-Reggae Riddims

DECADES
-70's
-80's
-90's

COUNTRY
-New Country
-Top Country

DANCE
-Dance Hits
-House
-FocusontheDJ

SPIRITUAL
-Gospel
-Christian Hits

JAZZ
-Jazz Classics
-Smooth Jazz



SIRIUS LINEUP

SIRIUS INTERVIEWS
-Miscellenous interviews (20+)

POP
-Sirius Hits 1
-90's and Now

DECADES
-60's Vibrations
-Totally 70's
-Big 80's

ROCK
-60's and 70's Vinyl
-70's and 80's Rewind
-80's Glam / Hair Nation
-80's Alt / First Wave
-News & Old / Spectrum

HIP HOP/R&B
-R&B /Heart and Soul
-Classic Soul / Soul Town

COUNTRY
-New Country
-Prime Country

JAZZ/BLUES/BROADWAY
-Jazz Cafe
-Sirius Blues
-Broadways Best

DANCE/ELECTRONIC
-Hits / The Beat
-Trance-House / Area33
-Smotth Elec/Chill

[Eyecon82]

thanks for doing this!

[Storino03]

good review. I like sirius. Is the audio quality for both interfaces the same?

[anskY]

great review!

[mas90guru]

I thought the Sprint Radio was slightly higher.

Sprint Radio also has the edge for Rap/Soul and variety.

Sirius has the edge for radio that is rather seamless, meaning no gaps between the songs as they play.

[Eyecon82]

sorry to get off topic...but check out www.shoutcast.com....it's better than sirius and sprint tv

or....check out www.thestreamcenter.com ..you can tune into almost every local radio station in the US..

all you need is kinoma, or pocket tunes to stream music :headbang2

[PrincessPixie]

Excellent to know! Thank you so much!

[pcsperson]

Nice review. So is Sirius staying with sprint or is it still ending soon?

[Dubspoon]

will the pauses ever stop for Sprint, I was looking into doing the Sirius becuase i thought they had more channels but I'll stick with Spint Radio epecially since thy've added live radio stations, WWPR in New York, KHHT in Los Angeles, WGCI in Chicago and WMIB in Miami

[ajskhan]

Someone should sticky this!!!

[INTERNET2000]

:good:

[djinks]

Great post thanks.

[ZiggyZ]

One thing I have noticed about the Sirius radio, is that the only channel that is in Stereo quality is the hits one. This is Free to most subscribers of a data package. And see someone would listen to it and want to subscribe to the sirius. Well I did and it was a HUGE mistake. the only channel in stereo was Sirius Hits One. All the other channels were like in mono or if you were to listen to radio over a basic vision(non-EVDO) connection. This was VERY disappointing. Now I'm not putting down Sirius, because they are awesome and I am a subscriber with them directly in my car. BUt this made me feel like this was a "Bate-and-Switch" type deal. HOpefully you guys know what that means.

And shoutcast is awesome as well, however, it won't work on sprint handsets directly, you have to use a 3rd party software to possibly get it to work seamlessly.

[ZiggyZ]

Actually, though the streamcenter link above, I stumbled upon a site that does streaming to your phone for FREE. go to the following link on your phone. http://tuner2.com/m.html

[Mr. Dibbs]

I would totally get Sirius Radio but I already have 2 radios and the high quality internet stream. I think the reason no rap is on the Sirius service is because it's not clean. Hot Jamz was apart of the service once but in order to send it out, Sprint required Sirius to make it family friendly. That didn't go over too well with the Sirius customers and soon it was pulled off Sprint.

[ZiggyZ]

I would totally get Sirius Radio but I already have 2 radios and the high quality internet stream. I think the reason no rap is on the Sirius service is because it's not clean. Hot Jamz was apart of the service once but in order to send it out, Sprint required Sirius to make it family friendly. That didn't go over too well with the Sirius customers and soon it was pulled off Sprint.

Even though and Internet Audio Stream comes with the Sirius Service, I decided to pay the additional $2.99 a month for the higher Quality. Over a period of one week, there was no change in the audio quality. So I called them and told them that I wanted it taken off and to provide a refund. they didn't give me a hard time with it. I told them that I expected more from paying for the internet stream, that i expected much better quality than what I was receiving. I think the quality was around 48k or something along those lines. I feel it should have been at least 128k or better, since IO would be paying for it.

out of curiousity, what is the quality that you are receiving from your high quality stream?

[Mr. Dibbs]

I'm getting 64kbps on the channels I listen to.

[ZiggyZ]

I'm getting 64kbps on the channels I listen to.

I suppose that is better than 48k, but I wouldn't consider that high quality if your paying an extra premium for it. Not trying to bash you. If anything, minimally, the quality should be 64k. but that;s just me.

[djinks]

How do you tell the audio quality on Serius or Sprint Radio?

[ZiggyZ]

How do you tell the audio quality on Serius or Sprint Radio?

Through the handset, it won't tell you the quality, but if you listen to either or, you will definitly notice a difference. Don't use Hits1 as something to tell the difference because that channel is always nice high quality. It's all the other channel of sirius that are very poor quiality, like as if I was listening to AM radio.

[scott_walker]

Great post mas90guru!!!

Is there a big difference between the playlists? In other words does it seem like one of them has a small amount of songs/hear repeats more than the other?

Too bad about Sirius not being in stereo; that's a big drawback. Looks to me, if I were to get one, I'd go with Sprint.

Also...I just checked on Kinoma and Pocket Tunes... those only work if you've got a palm type phone like Treo and such. Thanks for the info on those though.

[Mr. Dibbs]

someone made a last.fm page with what's currently playing on Sirius Hits 1 so this will give you an idea
http://www.last.fm/user/sirius hits1/

take out the space

[Dubspoon]

but waht about the skipping on Sprint Radio, it's like abunch of scratched CD's

[NValhalla]

I have Sirius for my car and use SiriusWM5 on my 6700 playing on TCPMP. I Like the channels, unedited, and the fact that it's free with my subscription. I don't know about other non WM5 phones, but it's perfect for me. I have yet to try the sound quality on head phones but it sounds as good through my speakerphone as my MP3s on my SD card do.

[pcsperson]

someone made a last.fm page with what's currently playing on Sirius Hits 1 so this will give you an idea
http://www.last.fm/user/sirius hits1/

take out the space

404 error

[Sprint4EverBaby]

It's been quite some time since I've been on SU or even read any of the posts so this may be a silly question so I beg your indulgence on this one.

I received some sort of mailing from Sprint about these changes but I wonder does it affect a user such as myself who simply subscribes to Sprint Power Vision Ultimate Pack, or is this only relevant if I specifically subscribed to some sort of addon to my Vision pack?

[Dubspoon]

I think it has to do withe free channels they offering regardless of PV plan you have

[Duran]

ok I hate to bring up the thread but anyways I subscribed to Sirius but I realized Sirius hits 1 quality is non EVDO not like it was before they pulled it...anyone expierenced this? So I went with Sprint Radio Extras...

[Duran]

anyone answer this?

[Duran]

Hm...as I subscribed to Sprint Radio Extra and they just added a Top 10 Countdown and Z100 (for those New York City Radio Listeners you know what I'm talking about) So Sprint Radio is like it's supposed to be :D

[Dubspoon]

what happenrd to to radio station on Extra, specifically WGCI in Chicago

[caedz]

Actually, though the streamcenter link above, I stumbled upon a site that does streaming to your phone for FREE. go to the following link on your phone. http://tuner2.com/m.html

VERY RAD POST! Thanks for the link! This is going to be used instead of sprint radio or sirius! Good sound quality as well...for a phone! :headbang2

THANK YOU!

[Dubspoon]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (MobilePhone MM-9000/US/1.0) NetFront/3.1 MMP/2.0)

Man 107.5 is the #1 station, at have 92.3 with those you would hear more of the top hip hop and r&b in Chicago

[Rikenium]

For perspective, I work in an office where satellite and AM/FM reception are not possible. My cell service is good on my PowerVision phone. I leave my phone plugged into a USB charger, so I can listen all day without worrying about my battery running down.

Having experienced both subscriptions, Sirius is head and shoulders above Sprint Radio Extra. It isn't that Sirius is fantastic, but the Sprint Radio Extra is extremely poor. First, the stations are literally like listening to a 256-512MB (if that) MP3 player on shuffle -- the song selection is limited (only a couple hours worth of unique songs), and the you might hear the same song twice in a row. The quality is also very poor -- there were lots of skips, blips, pauses, and tempo problems (slows then suddenly speeds up). This seems to indicate network issues. Since Sirius uses the same transmission network (EVDO), it may be the servers that the songs live on have issues. Last, the service is terrible -- the stations would often be unavailable because of error 7000 (whatever that means). I would listen and then there would be particularly bad jerky pauses, and then nothing. Sometimes I could get it back by exiting and re-entering the Sprint TV app. Often, I couldn't get any channels to work. I had to fall back to my MP3s on my 2GB microSD card a couple times a day. I get the same problems from the 10 default channels, except they have even less selection (sometimes the same 4 songs repeated for hours). On the plus side, as mentioned in the first post, there is the album cover and artist/song/album listed. The album cover is 3/8" on my M500, so it isn't much use. There are also lots of podcasts and comedy selections, but they're usually a minute or so long, and they don't change often (some never did during the month I had it), and some was mislabeled. The "Internet Daily" podcast was always the same. The comedy was the same all month, except for the 30 second Onion "News" that changed daily.

On the other hand, Sirius stations are programmed and seem to be simulcasts or rebroadcasts of their regular satellite stations. They have DJs, which may be a negative in your book, but it means the selection on a channel is bigger, and you won't hear a song repeated within an hour. The quality is hugely better -- maybe one song a day will have pauses and skips, and the tempo doesn't vary. The channel selection may be less, but I only regularly listened to a couple of the Extra stations anyway. I'm not a big fan of Urban/Rap/Hip-Hop, so the number of stations I'll tolerate is about the same. It's background music to me, but it don't notice any digital artifacts or clipping from being low bandwidth or over compressed.

As for value, Extra is 1/7 cheaper, but it was unavailable for at least 1/7 less time when I wanted it. Of Sirius' defects, the podcasts are available free over the internet. The song info is often said by the DJs, but you can always search the web for the lyrics to figure it out if they don't.

[Boraxo]

Great post and confirms my understanding that Sprint's channel lineup is worthless to me.

Sprint needs to remove itself from the content business and leave that to the experts.

[Dubspoon]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (MobilePhone SCP-M1/US/1.0) NetFront/3.3 MMP/2.0)

That's one opinion, like everything in the world it could be better but as far as what's available, it's cool to me

[dknight247]

sorry to get off topic...but check out www.shoutcast.com....it's better than sirius and sprint tv

or....check out www.thestreamcenter.com ..you can tune into almost every local radio station in the US..

all you need is kinoma, or pocket tunes to stream music :headbang2

is shoutcast compatible with the treo??

[Eyecon82]

is shoutcast compatible with the treo??


yep...just need kinoma...i use it all the time