1. I had a sneaking suspicion this would never live up to the hype. Turns out it's not even an iPod wannabe. The 1 hour limit makes it a $350+ paperweight. All I want is a convenient way to listen to Stern. Sirius needs to get...serious about putting out better hardware.

Posted at 9:54PM on Dec 1st 2005 by Geek

2. What are you talking about? i have 1:30:05 of "My Octane", 36.56 of "My Hip Hop", and 20:10 of "My Faction". not to mention 38 songs Ive recorded off of Sirius, and about 52 MP3's Ive transferred in.

The S50 is everything i thought it would be! you can set it up to record 20 shows at 2 hours each. if you want to record Stern, you set it up to record from 6-8, then 8-10. after that you can still record 18 more of your favorite shows.

please dont review a product you dont own.

Posted at 11:19AM on Dec 2nd 2005 by Philmore

3. Couple of thoughts here. We didn't review the product, we simply reported news that many other sites are reporting as well. As you said, you are scheduling the recording of shows up to 2 hours. The product was originally touted as recording music, but it's limited to shows for the scheduled 2 hours timeslots, right? What about recording music? Since you have the product, can you share the scheduling aspects of recording music? Can you comment on the other limitations that folks are reporting? Thanks!

Posted at 11:45AM on Dec 2nd 2005 by Kevin C. Tofel

4. "The product was originally touted as recording music, but it's limited to shows for the scheduled 2 hours timeslots, right?" SIRIUS never said half the things that some forum type pages said, there was many pages say what they "understood" the S50 would do. The unit is very nice, you can not schedule time slots to record on music stations, but you can record song by song. This is so the music you save off the S50 you can manage anyway you like and make your own stations. The S50 will also record 3 stations you listen to, and in my S50 I have a file that is over 2 hours long. Call My Sirius Shuffle; it is a recording of the station as broadcasted. You can schedule talk programs in 2 hour slots like a DVR would. You can also hard record talk programming. Any of the content off the air can not be saved off the S50, to your PC. This was the only thing the RIAA was worried about, the spread of content. I have saved so many songs on to my S50 off the air. It works as SIRIUS said it would. These RIAA reports were an over reaction, due to one misguided story on the internet.

Posted at 8:01PM on Dec 2nd 2005 by Joey

5. And even if it is a 2 hour time limit, it's still a pain to set 2 blocks to record Stern's show. And what if his show runs longer than 4 hours? Howard's been known to run much longer than that in the past.

With the digital signal capabilities, I'd love it if Sirius put out a player that I could tell to just record Stern's show than shut off.

Not that it's gonna ever happen, but the ideal would be a Sirius plugin for the iPod (sort of like the Griffin iRadio), which has a nice big hard drive, beautiful ease of use and much less annoying DRM issues.

Posted at 3:22PM on Dec 3rd 2005 by Geek

6. You must work for XM radio, everything I am reading about the S50 as far as reviews is all lies. I REALLY DO OWN a S50 (bought it from Crutchfield) and it does record by song AND ALSO FOUR HOUR BLOCKS OF ANY MUSIC. To record a four hour block of music hit the play / pause button twice on ANY CHANNEL (ie Octane) after 4 hours of recording the segment will fall under “content management” newly labeled "MY OCTANE" or whatever channel you had it on. When you listen to your new 4 hour block of whatever it will let you move forward by song, so you can skip the ones you dont like just like a MP3 player. The instruction manual wasn’t too clear on this so I called the special S50 # @ 800-869-5364 and they walked me through it, those guys know the unit very well. Dont believe all the hype on the net, lots of XM employees are bashing this unit for obvious reasons, it does EXACTLY what it promises.

Best regards
Morgan

PS the help line said it will record up to 50+ hours of music segments, haven’t had it long enough to verify that

Posted at 6:04PM on Dec 4th 2005 by Morgan

7. I got my S-50 2 days ago and it is awesome. Very easy to use and it does everything promised!

Posted at 11:13AM on Dec 6th 2005 by John

8. A $350 paper weight. Enough said.

Those who think its anymore and "really, really" like it are full of it.

Posted at 4:06PM on Dec 9th 2005 by George

9. Question! Help!: I am interested in this unit primarily so I can listen to Stern. I commute via my car or on train and from what I understand the unit only recieves a "live" signal while docked. How will I be able to listen to Stern each day if I have the unit with me on the train in the hours the show is on? Originally I thought that I could record Monday's show and listen to it the following day, but then I wouldn't be able to record the next days show because I will have the unit with me. I guess this is assuming that the Stern show will still be at its terrestrial radio time, right?

Posted at 2:56PM on Dec 10th 2005 by hez

10. hez, I was interested in a device just like you. I believe the XM devices are portable and allow you to receive live satelite programming while walking, etc. This S50 sounds like a piece of junk to me. I can only receive live broadcasts when docked?! If I dock the S50 at work in a brick building will I be able to listen to live Stern?! I want to listen to Stern so bad, but I am wishing he went to XM. It would have been so easy. The other thing that bugs me is XM broadcasts ALL of their stations online. Sirius only includes a sampling of their stations online. I was planning to listen to Stern online, but that will not happen! Sirius, I am finding you anything but Serious.

Posted at 6:43PM on Dec 10th 2005 by John C.

11. You guys are way to emotional.I'm going to get an S50.I hope it works for me the way I want it to.If it dosen't...I'll take it back and get something else.Tweeter dosen't care if I get that or another overpriced electronic.The main thing is your own personal needs,wants,and expectations.

Posted at 11:58PM on Dec 15th 2005 by beux

12. "The other thing that bugs me is XM broadcasts ALL of their stations online. Sirius only includes a sampling of their stations online."

Too true. I got Sirius solely for Stern. Not being able to listen online at work is a major drawback. Frankly, between that idiotic limitation and Sirius' failure to deliver a portable receiver, I feel ripped off. For my one year sub and the cost of hardware, I'd like to listen to Howard how AND when I want.

I emailed Sirius with these issues and was promptly blown off.

How annoying.

Posted at 12:06AM on Dec 17th 2005 by Geek

13. Just got my S50....Great little thing only problems so far is that today i went out to my car, docked the radio. It turned on after a few minutes then it turned off and wouldnt come back on..Whats the deal? The only thing that i think the should change is the ear buds they are cheap and sound bad.

Posted at 7:56AM on Dec 23rd 2005 by Robert

14. The "not being able to schedule recording of music" problem was fixed by firmware changes. I couldn't find the Sirius link I used when upgrading (that described the updates) but the first post in this thread mentions them: http://getsiriusinfo.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=25



Also good to know before you get the S50 is that uploading of music to the S50 requires use of their S50 Studio software and is painfully slow (~50 Meg took 10-15 minutes). It's possible to drag-drop to the folder (at expected USB 1 speeds) but the device doesn't show those files as available.



Something that the user guide is clear on is, that recorded shows can't be copied outside of the device. The the recorded shows are stored in a *.PAC format. I thought that this was the LPAC format & downloaded a translator...but the S50 PAC format is not the same & I don't know of any way to convert from their format into MP3.



Finally, I agree that its misleading for Sirius to show the "Listen Online" option next to all of its stations in the guide when only *some* of them are available (not Stern's & not Sports, among others). I've asked Sirius whether the online selection will change but no response yet.

Posted at 12:40PM on Dec 26th 2005 by K. Angel