Mostly news/sports/talk for me but I enjoy the music channels regularly. Music without all the commercials is a refreshing change from FM. All the commercials drive me nuts!

 

I have XM for both. Like being able to get stock market news on CNBC and Bloomberg, news on CNN and music on a variety of channels....with no commercials. There is talk between songs, but not long sessions like commercial AM or FM.

 

I don't have one in my GS but I do have it in my Mini Cooper. This probably doesn't apply to Lexus but Blitzsafe makes an adapter to connect a XM Direct receiver to the stock head unit in BMW/MINI. I was able to connect XM up for about $200.00 and the steering wheel controls work with it.

I usually listen to the uncensored comedy channel. One of my friends thinks the music is better on Sirius. Before buying Sirius, one can listen to it online using a trial membership. I can't remember if XM offers a trial membership but the service is available online.

 

Thanks for the info guys.

 

I used to have XM and switched to Sirius. Initially I did so because Howard Stern was coming to Sirius.

Later I discovered the signal strength was much stronger for Sirius over XM. It won't make much of a difference for most people around the country, but if you live in a heavily wooded area like New England, the signal approach angle is much steeper with Sirius. Meaning the signal travels more vertical due to Sirius' three satellites which rotate in orbit and typical at least one is as far north as Canada (close).

Being Clear Channel is a heavy investor of XM I heard rumors that the music was biased to Clear Channel artists. I also heard that XM runs music loops on many of their channels whereas Sirius is completely original and is produced in-house by stream jockeys who live and breathe the music they spin. (source: http://www.radiosatellite.org/)

Regarding sports I'm a football and hockey fan. XM has MLB and NHL, while Sirius has the NFL and NHL. So for me Sirius was the only choice.

I am uncertain of audio quality and who has the advantage there. I have installed Sirius Satellite radio into my GS430 and it worked great. I'm not however happy with Lexus' user interface for Satellite. It's an after thought and looks like AM/FM. Does not support category, music listings, and crops the title/artist to only 10 characters. This is the same for XM as it is for Sirius.

With other radios, Sirius does display more information in the title/artist fields. I think its over 26 while XM is less.

Sirius started 2 years later than XM so as far as subcribers, XM has the advantage, however, for the second quarter in a row Sirius has surpassed XM in subcriber growth and they are expected to continue to out pace XM for the remainder of the year.

CNET has a review http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6466_7-5068442-3.html

And here's the trend from MSNBC http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12134395/