Okay, I am a little on the PO'ed side at the moment. For the past two days I am now hearing commercials on XM music stations. Both on Flight 26 (Channel 26), CM (Channel 22), and 80's (Channel 8)???? I know they have always had commercials on many of the talk channel (Comedy 150 etc) but now they are on the music channels................................

Last time I checked we are paying good money to get these channels without commercials? What gives .... there was an advertisement for propecia this evening on Flight 26 ........................I am just a little frustrated and had to vent?

What's the deal guys???

 

Man I would be pissed if I have to pay to listen to commercials. That sucks!

 

Here is a similar thread for you: XM Reality Check!

From a quick skim, its related to a recent contract with Clear Channel Communications. Check out the thread for the details.

 

I know, when I first heard commercials on my stations, I was effin PISSED!!! The cost of service is going up and yet there are commercials on teh stations. I called to complain, but I got somebody in India who did not speak English.

 

Yeah, I heard commecials today on XM too. I was like...wtF??!?

 

you guys too? I actually thought I was listening to radio because of those commercials when I realized I was on XM. Hmm....so much for "commercial free". Guess I won't be renewing next year!

 

Yeah, I've noticed that a long time ago. XM created new channels to compensate for the for the channels that have commercials. Unfortunately, and I might complain about this, the programming on these alternate channels is atrocious.

 

This happened like a month ago...

I just erased the stations that have commercials. Its not a lot of stations... Just so happened to be the ones I had programmed.

I have always been pissed about comercials on the comedy channel. But thats a different topic.

 

thats why when my free trial ran out on my TL I didn't pay to keep it... paying for low quality audio stations, plus commercials just doesn't make sense... especially when I can just listen to my ipod...

 

It's related to stations that Clear Channel has a contract to program. I don't happen to listen to any of the ones with commercials. However, I bet if XM's stock tanks any more, they will start putting commercials on every station to boost their revenues.

Yeah, the XM sound quality sucks. As soon as someone busts out real Ipod integration (like BMW has) for the TL, goodbye XM!

 

correct me if I'm wrong, but i thought the bmw adapter only allows you to do 5 "bmw playlists" plus shuffle or random.... and no text info, except track#xx

I have the musiclink in my TL and I don't know why it gets such a bad rap... If you put a decent TTS voice on it (like an at&t one) it sounds just fine, and I can play any specific playlist, artist, album, genre, etc I want... practially everything I can do straight from the ipod... just no text on the screen showing what I'm listening to is major downside.

 

Just to be clear, it's related to an old contract with Clear Channel. The contract was entered into at the beginning (or close) of XM. At that time, XM needed content and contracted with CC to program 5 or so 'hits' stations.

CC subsequently claimed that they had the right under the contract to include commercials on the those channels. An arbitrator agreed with CC. So those stations now have commercials, as denoted by the "cm" in the station name on the radio display.

In response, XM created alternative stations which play basically the same music as the CC programmed ones.

The big downside to that is that it eats up bandwidth that could go to improving sound quality on other stations.

The CC contract has another year or few to go.

 

Didn't this happen like 6 months ago, and didn't XM mail everybody a info packet in the mail about this? Why this posting now?

I deleted the Clear Channel stations for this very reason as soon as XM brought their replacement stations online. I remember doing this when there was snow on the ground still.

 

Yes there is. I have a story to share with everyone. I had sirius for a couple of years in my old car, bought a tuner for the other car and ended turning them off because of all the talking and commercials. The DJ's were talking about the room temperature in the studio for 5 minutes one day so I tried and tried and tried to turn them off. I called 5 times to turn the failing external tuner off and they would not let me talk to anyone to do that. I was given the runaround and put on eternal hold every time. I had to change my credit card number to turn them off. Then they called my house around 25 times to tell me that there is a problem with my account on the external tuner. Since the other car was on a different billing cycle, I got another 25 calls about the Infiniti's tuner. I'm glad I shut it off when I did since I ended up trading my lemon 04 g35 coupe on the 07 TL Type-s. What a much superior car the TL is to the G.

Now that I have listened to XM also, there are not as many commercials but the channels are not as good in my opinion. I think I'll stick with my ipod and save the monthly fee.

 

It seems like this has been discussed umpteen times on this forum, and a link to one of those threads is posted above. Why doesn't this thread get the...........

 

Think that is bad? Have you looked at satellite television lately?

 

Just sharing my experience with everyone else.

Why don't you get the........

 

Hi guys,
I wonder if you have same problem with XM radio soun quality.
when I listen fm or cd the sound is perfct...
when I switch to xm its like am radio-no trebles ,poor bass etc.
I notice a big difference...
anyone have the same issue???
Thanks for any respond...

 

only some stations play commercials. I was surprised when i heard commercials for the 1st time. It was on the comedy channel 150 and I thought it was a joke.

I think the quality of the sound is the best

 

Certain XM stations do have poor sound compaired to others. (Ch. 20 comes to mind...)
And XM is NOT CD quality like they want you to believe...

 

So,I think this is not my radio that sucks only XM...they just lie about quality....
can you tell which stations actually sound good on XM so I can compare
I only have it for few days so don`t even know whats really on...

 

Are you talking about quality of XM radio ?
On my radio XM sucks and I dont know if only I have a problem or it should be that bad.....
If not ,than I have to visit a servis ....

 

all the rap stations are bumpin in mine. i get more bass from them than regular CDs (not surround sound CDs) but ch 66raw is good with me, that's all i play. the system bumps

 

I don`t have problem with bass-it`s good
i just can`t get trebles like they are not working....
but on fm and cd or dvd-a its perfect ,so why not xm???
anyone can tell me what is the problem?????please!!!

 

There are several threads here that mention signal compression due to limited bandwidth on some XM stations affects their broadcast quality. It's not an issue with the TL's receiver, but with stations' transmission, so other media sound better than some of the XM stations on the TL audio system.

 

I have the same problem. My XM sounds like AM... It is the Acura Radio not XM. I have friends that have an Integrated XM receiver and the sound quality is much better than in the Acura TL. I bought the IPOD interface and it blows away XM. I tried getting Acura to replace the XM receiver, but they say it sounds fine. I guess I have a better ear for music than they do......

 

Back from the dead!! Anyway, I just re-subscribed to XM for the $77 deal. I am so f'ing pissed that there are commercials on XM. WTF??? Isn't NO COMMERCIALS the best thing about XM?? I guess not, now I'm not sure what is!! :rippedoff

 

I assume you are referring only to the particular music channels already discussed. XM never represented that stations such as CNN or ESPN Radio or the MLB broadcasts would be free of advertisements. But anyway, the music channels that have the commercials aren't particularly good channels anyway. Why not just listen to something else?