Portable XM Satellite Radio Receivers

I've got a friend who has the second one and it gets perfect reception in the car. I wish I had one.
But, unfortunately, I don't know what kind of reception they get indoors.

Just about any satellite radio receiver will do what a satellite radio receiver does, which is to receive, decypt and convert to analog an encrypted digital bitstream. A digital signal pretty much either is "all there" or it isn't "there" at all, so "reception" is essentially present or not, with nothing in between. Signal integrity nd strength are about all that matter, and those are dependent on the antenna.

Where the antenna is located and how it is oriented are the key factors. Given the location of the transmitting satellites, an antenna with an unobstructed "view" somewhat south of directly overhead may be considered to be optimally placed. Signal repeaters, which will wirelessly relay the antenna's received signal to a secondary antenna connected to the receiver, are available for use in situations such as an indoor satellite radio receiver in a location physically beyond the length of the primary antenna's connecting cable. Also available are cable extensions, allowing a longer run between the receiver and the antenna.

All that said, the quality of the reproduced content - which is the point of the whole excersize, after all - depends entirely on the end stsage of the reproduction chain. I've been a satellite radio fan since its beta days, and have a couple different mobile/portable receivers and auditioned, but did not buy, a standard-component-sized home-only receiver which is intended to be incorporated into a main AV/Home Theater rig. Due to the location of my AV rack, I used a wireless repeater to relay the signal from an optimally positioned external antenna to the receiver in the AV rig. While the home receiver did sound better than the same XM channels from DirecTV, and noticeably sounded better when connected to my main AV receiver optically than with analog cable, the overall sound didn't really impress me - good enough for vehicle or portable use, casual listening, but nowhere near up to serious listening. I'm a bit of a stickler there, though; to my ear, as far as digital goes anything short of full Red Book Standard CD sounds like crap. XM, Sirius, MP3, iPod, DirecTV, DishNetwork, whatever; the best of it resembles music, most of it isn't worth listening to if there's any alternative. Good commercial broadcast FM, from a good antenna through a good tuner, played over a good stereo blows away any of the "computer age" formats - though to be fair, movie soundtracks actually in DD 5.1 do sound pretty good over satellite, but thats because there's an entirely different compression, decoding, and steering protocol going on there - not at all like that used for satellite radio or general base 2-channel Satellite TV audio . I use XM just about exclusively in portable or vehicle configuration; with good gear, it sounds OK and there are no commercials. Its fine for background, fine for simple entertaiment listening, but it is what it is. Over a fairly capable home theater rig, or a very good computer sound system, its unambiguously inferior to CD or good FM.

I have played around some, and have found that in a practical sense, there is very little difference in the "performance" of receivers; one sounds about the same as any other played over the same rig. There are huge differences, however, in features. In making a purchase decision, I'd evaluate the prospects' respective feature sets - such things as display visibility and properties, tuning options, end-chain connectivity options, size/location/function of available controls, and that sorta thing.

And, whether they're in your car, your boom box, your computer setup, or your home AV rig, cheap, low-compliance speakers or headphones driven by a lower-end amplifier are gonna sound crappy no matter how good the signal they're trying to reproduce - the rubber meets the road, so to say, where the music hits the ear.