# Merger & old Cust's



## Jin So (Aug 2, 2008)

Since our equip will be out of date, are they going to give us a discount on upgraded sets or are they going to give us the shaft, if so that woul ready suck.


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## Dolly (Jan 30, 2007)

Jin So said:


> Since our equip will be out of date, are they going to give us a discount on upgraded sets or are they going to give us the shaft, if so that woul ready suck.


Oh I'm sure we will have to buy the new equipment when it is available. That was one of the reasons I was against the merger.


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## Jin So (Aug 2, 2008)

Dolly said:


> Oh I'm sure we will have to buy the new equipment when it is available. That was one of the reasons I was against the merger.


same here


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## dengland (Aug 26, 2006)

Dolly said:


> Oh I'm sure we will have to buy the new equipment when it is available. That was one of the reasons I was against the merger.


That doesn't make sense guys....

There are 18.5M subscribers and 2 sets of sats in orbit. You don't just throw that away. Your existing Eq will continue to receive the same frequencies/formats that they receive today. You would need new equipment to receive both sets of satellites in the same receiver. You would need that for receiving ALL of the content from both XM and Sirius. I would expect some XM content will be fed to the Sirius satellites and some Sirius content will be fed to the XM satellites. (e.g NFL on the XM sats). And, of course, some content will be combined/common to both (e.g. I would expect one 70's channel fed to both XM and Sirius satellites.)


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

Part of the merger approval agreement was that both companies would continue to support legacy equipment forever. People are generally against mergers because they don't know all the terms and conditions that make them more consumer-friendly. If folks take the time to educate themselves these things would be taking less of a beating in the media, with consumers fueling the fire.


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## Jin So (Aug 2, 2008)

I know what the terms are. Just want to know it they are giving upgrades to us who have legancy equip


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

Jin So said:


> I know what the terms are. Just want to know it they are giving upgrades to us who have legancy equip


Why should they? They're already bleeding money... and anyway, you signed up under one service not knowing that there would be a merger (or, if you did, you did it at your own risk) so they owe you nothing. And they didn't "give you the shaft." Quite the contrary, actually, they are giving you what you signed up for. Enjoy!


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## Ken S (Feb 13, 2007)

Jin So said:


> I know what the terms are. Just want to know it they are giving upgrades to us who have legancy equip


They have always offered equipment deals...I would expect they'll continue to do that in the future in exchange for programming commitments.


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## Jin So (Aug 2, 2008)

Ken S said:


> They have always offered equipment deals...I would expect they'll continue to do that in the future in exchange for programming commitments.


Lets hope, eh


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## Jin So (Aug 2, 2008)

tcusta00 said:


> Why should they? They're already bleeding money... and anyway, you signed up under one service not knowing that there would be a merger (or, if you did, you did it at your own risk) so they owe you nothing. And they didn't "give you the shaft." Quite the contrary, actually, they are giving you what you signed up for. Enjoy!


There was no talks of a merger when I first signed up


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

Jin So said:


> There was no talks of a merger when I first signed up


Um, exactly. :sure:


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## vollmey (Mar 23, 2007)

Do you really need both services??? I got a Stiletto 2, it's fine for at least two or three years, at least. Now, I might add some of the XM stuff through the Ala-cart option that is going to be available. 

tcusta, tell me if I am wrong here. With new equipment and both services available on one receiver, the sat radio service won't be $12.99/month. It can't be, they both loose money with subs @ $12.99.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

Oh my..........


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

vollmey said:


> tcusta, tell me if I am wrong here. With new equipment and both services available on one receiver, the sat radio service won't be $12.99/month. It can't be, they both loose money with subs @ $12.99.


I'd love to tell you if you're wrong but I have no clue what you're asking. :lol:


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## vollmey (Mar 23, 2007)

tcusta00 said:


> I'd love to tell you if you're wrong but I have no clue what you're asking. :lol:


What I am asking I guess. When new receivers come out that get both XM / Sirius has either of there been any talk of what cost there going to pass on to us that might buy one of these new receivers? I can't see them saying you can have both services for $12.99 / month.

Your right, I was a bit vague earlier. Xmmerger.com I thought had this type of info on it, now it takes you to XM's site.


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

vollmey said:


> What I am asking I guess. When new receivers come out that get both XM / Sirius has either of there been any talk of what cost there going to pass on to us that might buy one of these new receivers? I can't see them saying you can have both services for $12.99 / month.
> 
> Your right, I was a bit vague earlier. Xmmerger.com I thought had this type of info on it, now it takes you to XM's site.


Yes, they did have prospective costs out... IIRC from the xmmerger.com site, when it was active, you could get both services for ~$16. I don't know what's actually going to be offered, but I'd imagine it will be similar to what was advertised pre-merger since they don't want to piss off the "powers that be" that approved the merger to begin with.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

$16.99 gets you XM Everything and Sirius Select, or Sirius Everything and XM Select.. A full subscription to each service, XM Everything and Sirius Everything are $12.95 each, making it $25.90, the same amount dual subscribers have been paying for years now. Or at least that was the original plan.


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## dervari (Dec 1, 2005)

vollmey said:


> I got a Stiletto 2, it's fine for at least two or three years, at least. Now, I might add some of the XM stuff through the Ala-cart option that is going to be available.


The current equipment will not support Ala Carte according to the Merger FAQ. That option will require new equipment.


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## MX727 (Jun 8, 2007)

Jin So said:


> Since our equip will be out of date, are they going to give us a discount on upgraded sets or are they going to give us the shaft, if so that woul ready suck.


Your equipment won't be out of date and it will continue to work. Mel explained why it has to be that way. The factory installed radios that people have in their cars must continue to work for the life of those cars. They don't expect people to install aftermarket radios in those cars and if they didn't service those systems, they know that they would lose many subscribers. They aren't dumb.


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## syphix (Jun 23, 2004)

Steve Mehs said:


> $16.99 gets you XM Everything and Sirius Select, or Sirius Everything and XM Select.. A full subscription to each service, XM Everything and Sirius Everything are $12.95 each, making it $25.90, the same amount dual subscribers have been paying for years now. Or at least that was the original plan.


Mel did state at the Town Hall meeting that when dual sub radios come out, that they would have to look into whether to offer both services at a discount.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

vollmey said:


> tcusta, tell me if I am wrong here. With new equipment and both services available on one receiver, the sat radio service won't be $12.99/month. It can't be, they both loose money with subs @ $12.99.


I guess you discovered why this merger is not the greatest thing ever.


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## gregjones (Sep 20, 2007)

Folks, you are missing the point. As tcusta00 was pointing out, getting the sum of the most popular channels is in fact cheaper than subscribing to both individually. 

The content on Sirius and the content on XM are not specific to hardware. Yes, the channels are now only broadcast on one or the other but that can change. When they have access to a Sirius channel, they can bounce it off of the XM satellite and it will show up on your XM receiver. This was specifically part of the rationale for the merger: providing the best content from both systems to both sets of receivers. They can't do that with every channel but they can provide a good number of them if they get rid of duplicate channels.

For instance, they don't need two channels for music from the 80s. They save money by not producing two shows for the same audience with the same music. They broadcast it on both networks to different hardware. This saves the new company money. People are more likely to buy into the new service because it is the "best of." Very few people actually subscribed to both before, (except in separate vehicles, but that is a very small percentage).

Hope this clears it up a bit.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

Sorry, but that is not entirely true. They cannot just "eliminate" duplicate channels. A current XM radio can only receive stuff broadcast from XM satellites and a current Sirius can only receive Sirius. That will not change. 

Like you said, one area of duplication is the decades channels. It would make sense from a merger standpoint to combine them to save money, but they can't. They may well combine the origination of the channel feeds so they need only one program director and one set of DJs, which will save them a few hundred thousand a year, maybe. But, unless they say sorry XM (or Sirius) people, you don't get decades channels any more, they still must send the combined channel feed to the Sirius Satellite network so it can be beamed to Sirius radios and also send the feed to the XM Sats to be beamed to XM radios.

Since the providers both have all the channels that they can fit into their bandwidth, the new combined decades channels still take up the exact same space in the feed as if they were 2 seperate channels.

Unless they come up with some new encoding scheme or compress down to talk channel quality, each channel that is added to one or the other service must result in a channel being removed from the service. In the case of a combined decades setup, the loss may not be large as you are taking away the current decades channels and replacing them with the combined, which is probably pretty similar, but that will not be the case with all the channels as XM and Sirius have had vastly differrent approaches to some of the genres.

All-in-all, the large costs, the satellites, must remain the same for the combined entity for some time. Only one day way in the future when all (or most) of the old one provider radios are dead and gone will they truly be able to combine the service without losing many of the subs they have now.


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## gregjones (Sep 20, 2007)

Lee L said:


> Sorry, but that is not entirely true. They cannot just "eliminate" duplicate channels. A current XM radio can only receive stuff broadcast from XM satellites and a current Sirius can only receive Sirius. That will not change.
> 
> Like you said, one area of duplication is the decades channels. It would make sense from a merger standpoint to combine them to save money, but they can't. They may well combine the origination of the channel feeds so they need only one program director and one set of DJs, which will save them a few hundred thousand a year, maybe. But, unless they say sorry XM (or Sirius) people, you don't get decades channels any more, they still must send the combined channel feed to the Sirius Satellite network so it can be beamed to Sirius radios and also send the feed to the XM Sats to be beamed to XM radios.
> 
> ...


The channels to which I referred (because it is a separate content source) are the audio stream. It is the audio feed that can be sent out via either sat. They do need the ability to send it to either satellite and encode it properly for both. Compare the two channel lists. There is a lot of overlap and this would represent a significant amount of money across the channels.

Both systems have a clause that states they may change programming. Yes, some channels will die along the way because both have maxed out capacity and need room for the "best of." The original argument was that there wasn't an opportunity for cost savings. If there are 30 original content channels that are duplicates in theme, that might save several hundred thousand apiece. That is a significant savings.

Recently, the cost to acquire programming has become a much greater percentage of the costs of satellites. They can't unlaunch the satellites (nor should they). They can renegotiate the exclusive contracts for content that sent programming costs through the roof for both companies.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

We are mostly on the same page then. I guess the main issue I have and I am sure others will, is just how similar are some of the channels that look like they may be. Kill off a few of peoples sacred cows and soon, you will have people dropping subs.

Couple all this with the fact that they just had to give a crapload of their bandwidth away and they probably have to kill another 20 stations, to satisfy that agreement and I just see Satellite Radio losing much of what makes it good, which is varied playlists.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

> Folks, you are missing the point. As tcusta00 was pointing out, getting the sum of the most popular channels is in fact cheaper than subscribing to both individually.


Personally I don't give a damn about price, I don't want a sum of most of the channels, I want all of the channels I currently get with XM and all the channels I currently get with Sirius.



> I guess the main issue I have and I am sure others will, is just how similar are some of the channels that look like they may be. Kill off a few of peoples sacred cows and soon, you will have people dropping subs.


Yep. As far as I'm concerned, there are absolutely no duplicates in music programming. ESPN Radio is duplicate programming, XM's Squizz and Sirius' Octane and not duplicates, XMs 60s on 6 and Sirius' 60s Vibrations are not duplicates either. Each and every music channels has it's own unique style, no matter how similar some claim the programming is, they're not the same.


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## gregjones (Sep 20, 2007)

Steve Mehs said:


> Personally I don't give a damn about price, I don't want a sum of most of the channels, I want all of the channels I currently get with XM and all the channels I currently get with Sirius.
> 
> Yep. As far as I'm concerned, there are absolutely no duplicates in music programming. ESPN Radio is duplicate programming, XM's Squizz and Sirius' Octane and not duplicates, XMs 60s on 6 and Sirius' 60s Vibrations are not duplicates either. Each and every music channels has it's own unique style, no matter how similar some claim the programming is, they're not the same.


In that case, you might as well accept being unhappy now. There is no way for them to add Sirius channels to XM equipment without either cutting the bitrate or killing channels. I would be surprised if they cut bitrate any further.

The idea of combining similarly themed channels between the providers was a specific financial goal of the merger. It will happen.


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## Jin So (Aug 2, 2008)

gregjones said:


> In that case, you might as well accept being unhappy now. There is no way for them to add Sirius channels to XM equipment without either cutting the bitrate or killing channels. I would be surprised if they cut bitrate any further.
> 
> The idea of combining similarly themed channels between the providers was a specific financial goal of the merger. It will happen.


And the wait begains for the new units.


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## Dolly (Jan 30, 2007)

And another question who decides "Best Of"? And I believe I read somewhere back long ago that if you have just XM and want to keep only XM channels you can do that. Or is that no longer true? I'm paying less now than what they are saying the "Best Of" will cost. So the merger didn't help me cost wise at all, if I can't just keep XM channels only


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## jeffmacguy (Oct 21, 2006)

Here's a term that everyone should become familiar with: "simulcast" This is the process whereby a single stream of audio content is broadcast on two (or more) different channels or in this context, two different services. e.g, xm's "80's on 8" audio stream is duplicated on Sirius' "Big 80's" or the other way around. 

Don't confuse the physical channel with the application (content). XM could blast "Deep Tracks" on every XM channel, if they wanted to. This has nothing to do with the capabilities of the receiver.


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