Gizmodo
In our monthly episode of "the FCC sucks at life sometimes," XM has pulled certain units from the shelves and stopped selling the units from their online store. The only radios pulled were ones that included an FM transmitting modulator. The Inno was excluded because it can be firmware updated.
Reasoning? The FCC sucks, easy enough. They are currently investigating the emission levels of the FM transmitters and XM is going to halt the sales of units with FM transmitters until a ruling is made. Come on guys, didn't you see that Ofcom over in UK-land is reconsidering their ban of iTrips. Stop the FM transmitting hate, yo.
XM Pulls FM-Enabled Radios from Kiosks & Online Store [Orbitcast]
Comments
Gee, dont pretty much ALL Satellite radio's that arent portable or head units have FM transmitters in them? I wonder if Sirius will have to do the same thing.
well, time to sell mine on ebay. Because they are banned I will make more money! Hurray!
I'm a ham operator and something of a hardware hacker, so I've already played around with the sat-rad I got for Christmas. As a _brief_ experiment, I connected my Sirius Starmate Replay's "FM Out" connector to a discone scanner antenna I have mounted in my attic. The unit's FM modulator was listenable (good strong signal) out to about 700-800 feet from my house. I don't need that kind of range, and I don't need the hassle, so I haven't hooked it up that way since. Even a simple wire antenna can make for a significant increase in FM modulator range, so I'm not suprised to hear about the issue coming up.
By all means, ban the teachnology, FCC. We can't have something GOOD played on the airwaves, can we?
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