The Sports Corner

XMp3: More pros then cons

With the XMp3 player being the first to explore portable universal radio, there tends to be a few problems along the way.

But the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, at least in my eyes.

My favourite feature so far has to be the TuneSelect. Why? Well, I’m one of those radio channel shufflers and TV clickers that annoy anyone who are not accustomed to two seconds of ever-changing content.

In other words, I keep searching through songs and channels - whether it be radio or television - until I find the one I like. But the XMp3 player’s TuneSelect helps diminish this “addiction”.

Basically, when a song that I enjoy comes on, I can set it to favourite artist or song, and everytime after, if that song appears on any of the 200+ channels, it will let me know and I can jump to that station. Brilliant I know.

It makes my listening easier, smoother and less scrolling.

Oh did I mention the variety that comes with XM radio? If you have yet to discover the (for a lack of a better term) “awesomeness” of XM radio, it’s about time you should. Content ranges from 50s music, to all ACDC, to top 20 current hits, to country, to whatever genre you can imagine. And that’s only the music.

For the past few weeks, I’ve connected the player to my sound system and the music has come steadily. There are no commercials and no talking, except when I listen to the sports stations.

Which leads me to another benefit of the XMp3; you can listen to any games of any sports broadcasted across North America. From football to NHL to NBA, and the list goes on. (I can even find out the current traffic conditions in Chicago if I felt like it.)

Now of course there are a few problems that I’ve had with the device.

First of all, it is not compatible with a Mac, which makes it difficult for me to utilize the “mp3″ part. However, I’m hoping that future releases will address this issue.

Another reoccurring difficulty that I’m encountering is the signal. There are certain areas where the connection pauses and causes my player to be “choppy”. Now this only happens when I’m using it portably, as opposed to it connected to the stand in my room.

At times this can be annoying, as certain parts of songs or broadcasts blanks out for a few seconds. Now I don’t know if this is because I’m located in Vancouver, B.C. and the signal here is not as strong as let’s say New York, but this is another problem I would like to see fixed.

And no, I wasn’t going under tunnels when this problem occurs.

For now though, these issues seem minuscule and are easily overlooked, mostly because the content makes you forget.

But that’s not to say that the XMp3 doesn’t have room for improvement. However, the concept is superb and its popularity will only improve as consumers discover the convenience of no-commercial, massive-variety radio.