Expo Drives Satellite Radio Home With Single/Multizone Model

[TulaneJeff]

http://www.twice.com/index.asp?layou...=searchResults

By Joseph Palenchar
TWICE
9/1/2003

Indianapolis— Sirius Satellite Radio will become the first satellite radio broadcaster to exhibit at a CEDIA Expo, where the company's booth will feature the industry's first three home-dedicated Sirius satellite radios: one each from Kenwood and Audiovox and a three-zone distributed-audio model from pro supplier Antex.

Meantime, rival satellite broadcaster XM will be represented in the Crestron and NetStreams booths. Crestron plans to unveil a single-zone XM tuner, and NetStreams plans an XM tuner card for its IP-based audio-distribution network.

Sirius president Joe Clayton contends that the home market will expand satellite-radio's potential to more than 100 million households on top of a potential 250 million mobile-audio users.

The market's potential is even greater when shopping malls, restaurants, and hotels are factored in, he said. Sirius recently launched a commercial music service that streams 60 channels of commercial-free music to commercial accounts, competing with services DMX and Muzak but at a lower $24.95/month service.

In the home, Clayton sees potential despite the existence of music services offered by cable companies and satellite-TV providers. Sirius, he contended, "offers more genres and selection than any satellite or cable operator offers. You can't get a lot of the music you hear on Sirius on cable or satellite TV."

In addition, the competing services don't yet offer multizone music tuners, which Sirius will offer for the first time through Antex's SRX-3 Triple Play, Clayton said. The $1,695-suggested Triple Play is Antex's first in a series of custom-home products. It incorporate three separate tuners in one chassis fed by a single antenna and controlled via a single interface. It ships in November with IR and RS-232 ports for integration into multizone distributed-audio systems.

Suitable for table-top display or rack mounting, the Triple Play features 160x240 graphical backlit LCD that displays category, channel, title, track, and artist information for each zone. The control panel also lets users select zones, scroll between stations and content categories, or choose from up to 10 preset stations power zone. It also features a parental lock and independent TOSlink, S/PDIF and RCA analog outputs for each zone.

For its part, Kenwood plans October shipments of a single-zone Sirius tuner at $299. The DT-7000S features RS-232C port for integration with distributed-audio and home-control systems. It also features four-line scrolling display that shows stream number, stream name, artist name, song title, and program category. A song-seek feature lets subscribers check what's playing on other channels while listening to their current selection. A memo feature lets users bookmark a song's title and artist information. Presets can be customized by user-programmable name.

Like Kenwood's model, Audiovox's Sirius tuner will be a single-zone add-on tuner. Pricing was unavailable.

Crestron's XM tuner, the C2N-TXM is a single-zone model that can be controlled from any custom-installed or wireless Crestron touchpanel, which will display song title, artist name, and channel. In an unusual twist, the touchpanels will also display the names of all songs playing simultaneously on XM's service. Users will be able to choose one of the songs to automatically tune to the channel playing that song.

It ships in late September. Pricing was unavailable.

Details of NetStreams's XM card were unavailable.

NetStreams's XM card is due in the fourth quarter as part of the company's DigiLinx distributed-audio system, which uses an Ethernet network to distribute audio in packetized form. Although the tuner card is a single-zone card, NetStreams's DigiLinx system will come with optional expansion module that accepts four additional XM cards or other system cards. For its part, Niles plans an XM tuner, possibly as early as the second quarter.

Jeff

[Manco]

We have Kenwood, XM has Crestron. I've never heard of them, Is this a good brand name?

The Kenwood will have an RS232 interface that allows external control. This sounds interesting. Does anyone know if I could get the details on this RS232 interface - specifically the control protocol?

[TulaneJeff]

The XM Crestron sounds interesting, as I think the Triple Play may be overkill for most home situations. The price and higher monthly subscription will probably limit it to commercial use.

I wonder if the Triple Play has remote keypads that display artist/title information.

Jeff

[Manco]

Originally Posted by TulaneJeff

The XM Creston sounds interesting, as I think the Triple Play may be overkill for most home situations.

I wonder if the Triple Play has remote keypads that display artist/title information.

The tripple play is probably more for businesses but I'm having a hard time imagining when it would be used. A big health club or hotel maybe?

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that there would be RS232 remote controllers with displays, but they are extra.

[SIRIUS_minded]

RS-232C is a long-established standard ("C" is the current version) that describes the physical interface and protocol for relatively low-speed serial data communication between computers and related devices. It was defined by an industry trade group, the Electronic Industries Association (EIA), originally for teletypewriter devices.
RS-232C is the interface that your computer uses to talk to and exchange data with your modem and other serial devices. Somewhere in your PC, typically on a Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) chip on your motherboard, the data from your computer is transmitted to an internal or external modem (or other serial device) from its Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) interface. Since data in your computer flows along parallel circuits and serial devices can handle only one bit at a time, the UART chip converts the groups of bits in parallel to a serial stream of bits. As your PC's DTE agent, it also communicates with the modem or other serial device, which, in accordance with the RS-232C standard, has a complementary interface called the Data Communications Equipment (DCE) interface

[Manco]

SIRIUS_minded, Thanks for your explanation of RS232, however I was asking a different question. RS232 is the physical interconnect, and I have that part down. What I'm interested in is what characters you send the device to control it. This would be the control protocol.

I've written lot's of RS232 type of software before, and thought it looked promising to possibly extract song information from the device, or create a PC driven control program.

[Jor-El]

Originally Posted by manco_lives

We have Kenwood, XM has Crestron. I've never heard of them, Is this a good brand name?

Crestron is typical a controls system company. They like AMX/Panja are most known for their touchpanel controllers that usually have custom designed interfaces to control various equipment (typically lighting, screens, displays, a/v devices). If you've been to a the recently remodelled BBs, they use either Crestron or Panja controls.

In short, it isn't typically for Joe 6pack as their stuff is pretty pricey.

[GJC]

Originally Posted by manco_lives

I've written lot's of RS232 type of software before, and thought it looked promising to possibly extract song information from the device, or create a PC driven control program.

No doubt this is proprietary information.

[G35Guy]

My brother and his wife are in the process of building a house and is having a 6-zone Sirius system integrated with his crestron home automation system. It's going to be amazing. The crestron system controls everything from lights to the plasma screens, to the movie theater, all the security systems, etc...I urged him to get the sirius installed so we could listen to it in his gym, and he went a step further. They are installing 2 of the antex 3 zone systems. The zones he has chosen are: master bedroom, office, gym, theater, pool area, family room. The house won't be done until late November, but it promises to be quite exciting. Too bad it's not my house But, at least I'll get to use it now and then.

[Manco]

Wow that's cool to hear someone having a purpose for this receiver. His monthly bill will be around $50. Sounds like a nice home to need 6 zones!

[G35Guy]

Yeah, it's a ridiculously nice home. Honestly, it's overkill....no one needs all the room and toys he's building into the thing. It's nowhere near those huge mansions like the hollywood stars have, but it's still about 8000 square feet and close to $3 million when it's all said and done. I'm still waiting for him to pay off my student loans...lol.