New XM upgrades worth your consideration: Polk XRT12 and SkyFi2 (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

Small update: Talked to my dad tonight and he mentioned his pleasure with XM radio and the SkyFi2 unit. He found the olde-timey radio broadcasts and was enjoying some old dramas on a recent trip.

Driving through Southern Illinois, he experienced only modest dropouts near microwave towers.

He's found the vent-mount to be the best way to hold the SkyFi2 in his truck.

The portable unit was also handy; he lent it to my sister for a weekend trip to Ohio. She and her husband said it worked find the whole way though with some signal loss somewhere in Ohio. And I don't think they were using the antenna.

My dad keeps the antenna in inside the truck, sitting on the dash. He's going to try it on the roof and see if that further improves reception.

Thanks again for the great review just before Xmas, Ron. It made for a great present for my dad.

 

[Doug Miller]

Has anyone's Skyfi2 decided to erase all of your Tuneselect, Stock Ticker, and Sports settings? Mine's done it twice in the last week. I also fired up my unit and found that it was deactivated -- that was the first time all my settings were erased. I figure it has to do with a satellite down time or something that erases all my info.

Doug

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Doug,

Wow...no.

Still under warranty? I'd look to have it replaced.

 

[Doug Miller]

The weird thing is that it doesn't erase my station presets.

Doug

 

[DaveF]

Another note from dad: he left his Skyfi turned on all weekend, powered by the truck's battery. No ill effects; the power draw is so low it didn't kill the battery. Just in case you were worried about your own absent-mindedness

 

[Bob_L]

I just received and activated my SkyFi2, after owning an original SkyFi for two years.

Pulled the SkyFi out of the cradle, plugged in the SkyFi2 and did an activation. Same system. Same receiver. Same speakers.

No question. The SkyFi2 sounds considerably better than the SkyFi. The classical stations exhibit much more sense of "air" and spaciousness in the sound, plus an additional clarity in the high range. (Though the additional clarity may make some of the digital artifacts a bit more audible, too.)

XM still isn't the "near-CD quality" that they claim, but the SkyFi2 provides a significantly more appealing representation of the XM signal than the original SkyFi.

A very good purchase for sound alone. PLUS there are all the new convenience features of the SkyFi2, not least of them the ability to get very nice sounding FM signal in my main home theater system in the next room. (I have the XM in my home office.)

By the way, there's an aspect of the 30 minute buffer that I haven't seen specified anywhere. I thought it would be just like having a tape recording. That is, I would back up a few minutes to hear something I wanted to hear again or that I missed. However, the screen display actually cycles through the titles of the songs/compositions that are buffered, so with a few clicks you can go right to the beginning of something you've heard. (This is also a great feature if you failed to look at the display in time to catch what the heck that was they just played.)

 

[Ronald Epstein]

SkyFi 2 rocks!

 

[Doug Miller]

A followup, my Skyfi2 kept dropping my tuneselect and sports/stock tickers. I called Delphi and the guy said there's something wrong with it, so I sent it out yesterday. I already miss it. :frowning:

Doug

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Doug,

I take it Delphi is going to fix this for
you at no charge....yes?

 

[Doug Miller]

Ron --

Yeah, no charge. I should have returned it in my 30 day window to Best Buy, but just never got around to it. Plus, since it was a bundle I figured they were going to hassle me anyway. The customer service line was pretty easy to work with, when I described my problem and the things I'd done to try and fix it (I thought my car might be surging the unit at startup, so I'd tried powering down before I turned off my engine, but it still did it) he said there was something wrong with it.

I had to ship it to some warehouse in Michigan, they'll send another one out, but not until they receive my bad one. I figure I'm looking about 7-10 days. I would have rather had them ship me a new one, then had me ship my old one out in a pre-paid box (to save me the $5 UPS charge) but oh well. I asked the guy about whether I had to pay activation again, and he said if I told XM that I had a warranty issue that they would activate me for free and reduce my bill for the down time -- which I thought was pretty cool.

Doug

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Doug,

Very good!