- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 71 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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14 out of 14 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"RIAA Seriously Crippled Device"
Pros: Amazing Display, Very light and portable, Mechanicly easy to record single songs
Cons: You can not schedule recordings for music channels !, Controls are a little unintuitive, Home dock is a little flaky, Worst support I have seen for any product
Summary: I was very excited to buy this product. The fact that the S50 does not have the capability to listen to live satelite stream was not important as I had heard that the MiFi that XM offers had very poor reception anyways.
I activated the radio and soon found that I was unable to scuedule a recording for music channels; only talk/sport channels. I tried contacting Sirius support, but I gave up after 40 minutes on hold. I emailed support, searched the web and foind sever articles that mentioned that due to RIAA restrictions, the S50 had been crippled. Not only could you not scheule recordings for music channels, but you could only record one song at a time; neither of these items were reflected in the user manual.
The reason I got the S50 was that I wanted to be able to record a few hours worth of music overnight and take it to the gym...this was impossible to do with the S50. So, I very promptly returned it.
As a further insult, when I finaly recieved an email from their support (3 days after I send the email) all the tech did was regurgiate the user manual with instructions on the mechanisms of recording a channel. My email detailed how I was able to schedule recordings for talk channels, but I recieved a "Recording Not Permitted" message when I tried to schedule a recording for a music channel. So, it was clear that the tech barely read my email before giving me a useless response. I have to say that Sirius support is the worst I have seen for any product.
If you can live with the restrictions of the S50, than it is a very nice product...but be aware of those limitation because you will not get any usefull info from Sirius.
- 4 replies to this review
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I would only buy the s50 if it was truly portable (able to recieve sattelite signals like a walkman). I just hook my sirius reciever to the 'line in'on my computer and record directly to the harddrive. I can easily edit seperate songs or talk shows and download them to my 1gb mp3 player. I thought about buying this, but I don't need to record songs in my car.It seems too expensive and impractical.
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My S50 automatically did that when I first connected it to power and antenna, however you can manually do that from the computer throuch the sirius website.
Sorry you took your's back! -
You now can schedule music station recordings. The latest version of the S50's firmware allows the following new updates.
New Firmware: The Sirius S50?s operating system software has an update.
This new firmware?s (version 1.0.10) features include:
Scheduled recordings on music channels
Fast forward and rewind through songs and segments in playback of scheduled recordings
Nearly 2x the amount of memory allocated to My Sirius Channels
Increased platform stability and improved operation
Upgrading the Sirius S50?s firmware is easy. First upgrade the PC Software (described above) and then use the ?check for software update? feature within the ?Device Settings? option.
Here's there website to confirm.
http://www.sirius.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Sirius/CachedPage&c=ProductAsset&cid=1130363753674
or do a search from google on Sirius S50 Update. The second indented link down as of 01/07/06 -
I was in the market for this product, immediatly prior to purchasing it I heard about it being RIAA Cripled, I found others on the net that confermed that you could not schedule music to be recorded, now I wouldnt buy this product with your money, $300.00 to record a talk show? Yeah, Right.
Sirius S50:
