I’ve been a XM subscriber for a few months now and I have to say that I truely love it. I find it a bit funny that I’m going back to radio… heck with access to thousands of cds and an iPod fully loaded, why do I think it’s so great? The beauty of XM radio is that you get the benefits of digital commercial free music without taking up time trying to be a program director. I’ve been pretty busy lately and I love the fact that I don’t need to download music or take time to create a playlist. I just tune to a genre I feel like listen to and voila, I get uninterrupted, digital music that someone programmed for me. No fuss, no muss… plus I get to hear music I otherwise probably wouldn’t have ever bought or downloaded. It’s well worth the $9.95/mo. Now if only they would buy Real ONLY for the Rhapsody service, then it would cover all the bases.
With all that aside, I found out that Polk Audio came out with a component sized XM tuner. They claim the XRt12 is the world’s first component sized XM tuner, but I think that is incorrect since Russound came out with a XM tuner that is component sized for their wholehouse audio solution a while back (and it’s available in a dual tuner model too!). Anyways, it great to see that a device of this quality is only $299 (MSRP). If you like to listen to music while at home, then check out this unit! You should also check out the new portable units since you can hook them up in the car, house, boat, or even while on the run.