SIRIUS Backstage

DAB, a moderator here at Backstage, noticed something today on his new Sportster 4 that hints it could be the first radio that is ready for Sirius’ upcoming Hierarchal Modulation. Sirius has released that HM will increase Sirius’ programming capacity by 25%. We do not know 100% if this is the case, it could just be a goof on Sirius’ part.

As you can see the Sportster 4 picks up the other Canadian channels that up until now US residents have never received. We believe that Sirius may have these channels streaming (for lack of better words) over their hierarchal modulation. Again, we are not 100% sure of this. We should know more in the coming months as Sirius releases their live portable.  Stay tuned for the latest updates.
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SIRIUSBackstage.com is happy to announce the return of Walk The Dog.

The concept behind Walk The Dog is to expand the SIRIUS listening experience beyond your favorite presets and discover all the great and diverse musical genres that SIRIUS has to offer.

The way that Walk The Dog works is every week we will be discovering three new SIRIUS music channels. There will be a channel that is consider popular, one that is considered somewhat popular, and one that is considered not so popular or that some have never tuned into before. Now of course opinions will vary from listener to listener, but the three channels each week will be very diverse so most everyone should have at least one channel that they will be discovering for the first time.

I encourage everyone participating to listen with an open mind. The goal of Walk The Dog is not to force you to listen to every music channel that SIRIUS offers but to encourage you to at least give every channel a try. There will be no rules as to how long or when during the week you have to listen the each channel all I ask is that you try to give each channel an hour of your weekly SIRIUS listening. During the week that the three channels are premiered there will be an open forum for us to discuss our thoughts and opinions of the channels.

New channels will be announced on Saturday with the listening experience starting on Monday and continuing through Saturday evening. Sundays will be dedicated to posting your final feelings of the channels and if you plan on listening to it in the future. There won’t be a set schedule to what channels will be played so if SIRIUS has any special programming or event on a channel we can schedule accordingly. It also gives us the ability to surprise everyone and we absolutely love surprises.

Full details can be found here.

Ryan over at Orbitcast.com has discovered a great review on CNET about the Zing Player.

Rafe Needleman at CNET said that the SIRIUS-branded Zing player is scheduled to ship later this year.

It appears that the new device will receive SIRIUS content over the Internet, rather than the satellite network.

This opens up the possibility that SIRIUS may extend the service to a variety of Internet radio devices.

Digital music company Sonos already has a sophiticated package that allows you to stream WiFi Radio throughout your home, along with a slick full-color controller.

This opens up the possibility of SIRIUS coming out with a WiFi powered repeater, so you can have a SIRIUS zone in each room of your home. The possibilties are endless with an established standard such as WiFi.

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Ok, so it’s an odd title. But pay attention to the word Zing because that may just be the name of Sirius’ partner with their new portable. Orbitcast.com has the story…

Introducing Zing. A software platform that can work across any type of wireless connection, from WiFi to 3G, allowing digital media devices to connect to music services or other online content sources.

According to SiliconBeat, Zing has a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio to stream live Sirius content to mobile devices. In addition to that, Zing’s founder - former Apple exec Tim Bucher - said a Zing-powered Sirius device is in the works, but he was not ready to divulge details earlier this week.

Orbitcast goes on to say that Zing also allows their users to purchase their content.

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