Audiovox announced that it will stop shipping out its Xpress radio for XM. The reason is because the FCC has a problem with the FM transmitter that is in it, and says that it is exceeding the guidelines in the power it is transmitting in. The FM transmitter is the part of the radio that broadcasts your audio on an aftermarket satellite radio receiver to your car’s FM antenna wirelessly.The problem now becomes, is this isolated to one incident, namely the Xpress radio being faulty, or will it affect Sirius radios in the future? While Audiovox is no longer a partner with Sirius, if they were making what they believed to be ‘legal’ fm transmitters, Sirius makers Directed Electronics and Xact could be doing the same thing. If they are, it would mean that future radios could be delayed in the near term(think new Sportster coming out in a couple weeks) while it is sorted out, and/or the new radios could come out with significantly reduced power for the FM transmitters. If that happens, that could mean that many radios will need to be wired into cars in order for a decent sound quality to be picked up, making it harder for satellite radio to make it into the mainstream. Hopefully it was just a faulty problem for the Audiovox Xpress.

Posted by BenDee on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 11:03 am.
Filed in XM, Sirius.
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