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I've been a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber for ages, but I'm ready to pull the plug. I still think some of the music and talk channels are pretty good, but the sound quality has always been iffy. The treble sounds like it's underwater; it "swishes" and sounds garbled. I got around that by playing Sirius over my Tivoli PAL table radio, and since the PAL doesn't have a tweeter it softens the sound enough to make Sirius less irritating. The Tivoli is also on the other side of the room, and that helps to … Read more

Google is hoping to give its foundering Google TV effort a jump start from shock jock Howard Stern.

Satellite radio provider Sirius XM told Reuters that it will make all of its programming available on Google TV through a new app that will allow listeners to pause live programs and play back up to five hours of content. Sirius XM is expected to announce the deal tomorrow at Google's I/O developers conference in San Francisco. (Update, June 27 at 7:25 a.m. PT: It's official: SiriusXM says it's coming soon to Google TV.)

The app, … Read more

It's official -- the best feature of SiriusXM's iPhone (and now Android app) has been removed from many of its most popular stations. Version 2.0.2 of the iPhone app confirmed what many subscribers suspected: licensing contracts got in the way of convenience and technology.

The satellite radio company updated its iPhone app on April 16 to version 2.0.1. Many listeners who updated reported network errors preventing them from using the app, and others lucky enough to connect to SiriusXM bemoaned the loss of an exit button and were left wondering why 5-hour rewind was … Read more

If you're a SiriusXM mobile subscriber and haven't already updated to the latest version of the iPhone app, you'll want to hold off. The 2.0.1 update on April 16 is advertised on iTunes to include faster channel changes and some bug fixes, but it looks like it also introduced a lot of new bugs and maybe eliminated some of the old features.

Last December, SiriusXM introduced a rewind capability with the 2.0 mobile app release. Listeners could tune into any station and replay content that aired up to five hours earlier. However, the 2.0.1 release seems to have restricted this feature on several of the popular news and entertainment stations, including ESPN, Howard100, and MSNBC.

Reviews of the latest version of the app on the App Store report network errors that prevent users from connecting to the service. Many commenters on AppComments.com report that the rewind feature is either broken or has been disabled on some of their favorite channels.

A CNET reader, who first alerted this writer of the change, e-mailed a list of the stations that no longer permit five-hour rewind: … Read more

Dell is rolling out a series of updates to the Alienware M14x, m17x, m18x laptops, including the latest GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. This timing is odd, to say the least, as Intel's third-generation Core i-series CPUs (also known as Ivy Bridge) aren't included.

Instead, these new Alienware models have the current second-gen chips (aka Sandy Bridge). As the high-end quad-core versions of Ivy Bridge are expected to be available from PC makers starting around April 29, the message is clear -- anyone who orders one of these new Alienware laptops before that is a sucker. … Read more

Talk radio is careening toward a technology revolution and tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson may be the man to lead it.

Six months after launching Dar.fm, billed as a TiVo for radio, Robertson's startup has expanded the number of stations it offers listeners access to from 100 to 5,000. The company enables subscribers to record, in a way similar to TV DVRs, from among more than 20,000 radio shows, including Rush Limbaugh, and NPR's Fresh Air and Car Talk. The service then streams or downloads the shows to PCs, mobile phones, or set-top boxes.

Robertson has … Read more

The latest version of Sirius XM Radio's iPhone app features time-shifting capabilities (also known as "pause" and "rewind" buttons).

If you've ever tuned into a radio station just as your favorite song was ending, or rolled into work before "The Howard Stern Show" is over, the new version of the SiriusXM Internet Radio app is for you. It gives you access to the 30 new channels without the need for additional hardware. It also lets you pause whatever content is streaming, rewind to the beginning of songs or programs, and access previously aired shows.… Read more

SiriusXM's Lynx radio is coming just in time for the holidays, according to CE Outlook. In a call with analysts, Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin confirmed that the Lynx 2.0 radio will ship by the end of the year.

The Android-based radio is satellite 2.0-compatible and will be able to access the 30 new channels that SiriusXM debuted last month, and should be able to access the on-demand programming that launches next year. Priced at $249, the plug-and-play device will also be able to receive satellite channels over WiFi and stream music over a Bluetooth connection to … Read more

Kia Motors revealed the prices of the 2012 Kia Rio sedan starting at $13,400 MSRP (plus in $750 destination charges). The Rio comes in three trim levels: LX, EX and SX, all powered by the same 1.6-liter gasoline direct injection (GDI) that boasts 138 horsepower and 123 pound-feet of torque.

The base trim, the LX, comes with a six-speed manual transmission, or customers can upgrade to an a six-speed automatic transmission for $14,500. The top-of-the-line SX trim starts at $17,500 (plus destination charges). All three trims offer an estimated 30 mpg city and 40 mpg highway.… Read more