Yesterday my XM got stuck on channel 83 and froze there. It didn't matter what channel I changed it to, the actual music wouldn't change, yet the the info screen would show the group and song of whatever channel I selected (8, 55, etc.) After waiting 15 minutes on hold for the XM tech dept., I decided to turn off the ignition and turn it back on to see if that would solve the problem. It did.

I've had satellite radio for 7 years and this type of issue has never come up. Has this ever happened to anyone else?

 

It's a computer (your car and its electronics, including XM tuner). Stuff like that happens to computers from time to time. It is usually not an indication of a real problem. You eventually did what one always needs to do in these situations -- reboot the computer.

Restarting the car is an equivalent of a soft reboot. Sometimes a hard reboot is required to get electrical gremlins out. Hard reboot on the GS requires disconnecting the battery for certain amount of time. Dealer had to do this once to my car because of weird glitches.

 

Kinda what I figured, your analysis makes perfect sense. That's why I decided to just give it a try and it fixed the problem.

 

I've had a few oddities over the years and restarting the car is usually enough. Modeler's explanation makes sense. Just once, i completely lost the signal and restarting didn't fix it so had to call the tech line. they had me turn off the car, remove key (have keyless ignition so I ignored that) and open the drivers door for 30 seconds. then restart everything. sat radio came back on but I think they pinged my system somehow so I'm not sure what the opening the driver door really did. just passing on.

 

Never had the problem in my car, but my Toyota Truck does this periodically and just turning off and back on will solve the problem.