One topic that gets constant chatter from customers of SiriusXM is when and whether the company is every going to manufacture a new generation of receivers. There has been no indication from SiriusXM that the company is going to release new receivers for this holiday season. That leave us consumer with time to ponder what features the company could add to receivers to make them more user-friendly.
The company simply cannot continue to flood the market with the Onyx or the Onyx EZ models. Both of these models can be bought very cheaply and there is a good chance that if you call SiriusXM today you could get either one of these receivers for free or at a drastically reduced cost. The Onyx is feature barren and pales in-comparison to Delphi's Roady XT for features or build quality. I don't understand the business rational of making the Onyx receiver the "go-to" radio that the company wants to push on its customers. It posses none of the qualities of a receiver that make SiriusXM worth either the receiver purchase price or the monthly subscription rate. Instead, the company should be pointing out and equipping the customer with the information about what a receiver can do. My personal favorite feature on Sirius or XM radios I own both types, is XM's Tune Select or Sirius's Seek List. A cheap feature to add to any radio and an aspect of a receiver that would set it a part from FM and internet radio.
What I do like about the Edge, Lynx and Onyx plus is the displays of the receivers. The high-resolution color displays are very easy to read and they can hold more information than previous generation of receivers. Because these displays are easy to view and are bigger than a Starmate or Roady XT display they should be available to display more information than older generation of receivers.
If there is one weakness that almost every SiriusXM customer has had to deal with its the customer service department. Most of the time the Customer Service Representatives know less about the product than the customer making the phone call. And what they do know is being feed to them by a company-guided script. Yes, you can activate your receiver online at siriusxm.com but there are just times when you would rather call a person on the phone and explain to them what changes you want done to your account.
Account information should be available on the receiver itself. The start and end date of the particular billing cycle, what SiriusXM plan you are subscribed to, how many day there are left before your billed, account number and the ability to pay and cancel the service. Anything that a customer can do on the website should be available to be completed on a receiver.
Another feature I would like to see added is On-Demand over the satellites. Yes,On-Demand is a great feature that benefits those customers who subscribe to SiriusXM Internet Radio. As of now, On-Demand is one-dimensional and should be a basic feature on the next-generation of satellite radios. On the next wave of receivers SiriusXM should make available a MicroSD card slot so that receivers can download satellite On-Demand programming when the receiver is turned off. The receiver itself can have a limited number of memory hours installed on it and should be available to download On-Demand programming at a slower-rate if the receiver is in use.
The public yearns for another portable satellite radio. We live, work and play in the age of portable devices and satellite radio isn't any different. While there are millions of people who love having everything they digitally need on their smartphone most of us don't have an unlimited data plan and would prefer to have a satellite flexable choice to listen to satellite radio. This radio also needs to have at least one built-in speaker and a replaceable battery that lasts 8-10 hours per charge. It also needs to have wi-fi functionally, as well as 4G nationwide coverage so that SiriusXM can partner with a cell network provider and sell data for this device. If the existing SiriusXM subscriber is already a customer of the cellular company they can share data on both devices. Adding AM/FM reception to this device would be great too.
Abandon touch screen car receivers. The Lynx was a solo act and it should be kept that way. While it was a good idea and could be improved upon with later models that were never to come it has been discontinued by the company and good reason. While the Lynx's website says that "its the one radio that can do it all", it lacks one major functionally, being a true portable radio. Also, the touchscreen of the Lynx is extremely hard to use when driving and forces you to take your eyes off the road far too many times to be safe. The Lynx's software is very buggy even when the latest firmware is installed causing the receiver run slowly. The icons on the displays are too close together to tap easily and fast-forwarding and rewinding when trying to drive is near impossible.
Make every single new receiver 2.0 compatible, built-in and plug and plug. Why SiriusXM continues to sell and install satellite radios that are not 2.0 compatible is beyond me. There are a limited number of customers who are going to upgrade to newer and more expensive satellite radios when they are released, although the great majority of consumers don't pay that close attention to know when the company released new models. And surely, most people are not going to upgrade in order to receiver 10 or 12 "extra channels" that they weren't receiving before. SiriusXM has to step out of the dark ages of 1.0 and today has to make every customer feel as if they are receiving the best product for their dollar and that is by making 2.0 the new programming standard. True, every customer is not going to need or want fast-forwarding or rewinding and for some people 10 pre-sets is going to be enough, instead of 30. Scrap the Stratus 7 and Starmate 8 models that will never receive 2.0 channels (because they run on the Sirius Network and 2.0 is run on the XM network) and add 2.0 compatibility to the Onyx EZ model in future generations.
These are a hand full of my suggestions that would be great additions to the next generation of satellite radio receivers. Is there is a feature that you would like to see added to SiriusXM's next generation of receivers? Or maybe one that you are not so fond of and would like to see abandoned. Let me know what you think.
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