fyi: to all people in or planning to join the xm nation: for the coming year and years in mobile electronics, XM radio is ABANDONING their partnerships with aftermarket manufacturers IE: sony, alpine, pioneer, etc. . .

what will happen is that each manufacturer will have only ONE or two units that will have XM capability, and they will have the tuner built in such as the new alpine shown in another thread ( nothing extra to purchase except for an antenna) their other models will NOT be designed to use XM. so if you wanna have XM in your aftermarket radio, buy the tuner now while you still can!

there will be only 2 ways you will be able to have XM in the future: MOST new cars will COME with XM allready installed in the factory radio

OR

You can buy an xm tuner IE Delphi SkyFi, Roady, or Commander and have an FM modulator to get sound.

thats it.

it is the goal of XM to get as many people subscribed for as little startup cost as possible. XM wants their product to be accessible to everyone, not just people willing to pay $400 for a head unit, tuner, and antenna. especially when they can sell an all in one tuner for $150.

Wow thanks a lot, that makes a huge difference on the order I am buying my stereo

I thought that XM was going to be manufacturing tuners for all brands now, with a simple adapter to each system... i.e. an XM receiver -> Alpine Ai-Net adapter.

Good info because I'm thinking of getting an XM tuner.

phildox is right on the money. They'll be making universal tuners and you'll just need an adapter.
Also, Alpine is going to be releasing a unit with a built in XM tuner. No more need for an external box, the antenna plugs right into the HU. I see this as being the way XM units will be going in the future.

So do you have any more info on these universal tuners? I have a CDA-7995 and I am wondering if I should hurry and find the Alpine tuner before it runs out of stock, or if the universal tuner might be better to have for some reason.

offset

Run a search over on XMFan.com. I seem to recall a recent thread that discussed the issue.

That's a lot of ones.

XM will be releasing a universal tuner for about $50 retail in 2-3 months. Price was an estimate told to me at the XM booth at CES this past weekend. Blitzsafe will be making adapters that will allow the XM piece to plug into Alpine, Sony, Pioneer and even Kenwood (they normally do Sirius) and others. I'd guess the adapter will be about $50 from past experience.

Alpine's XM tuner is really hard to find at this point. Most stores are sold out of them, and Alpine is out too. When I last looked a couple months ago they were going for over $200 on eBay, and those were used units.

what is the advantage of getting the alpine xm tuner over the universal one? I dont understand how making cheaper xm tuners is a bad thing. dont they all do the same thing? or are the brand specific xm tuners more advanced or more integrated into the headunits?

yep, that's what the Alpine rep told me at CES, $50 for the XM unit, $50 for the Blitzsafe adapter. I would wait for the new unit to come out instead of buying the older Alpine XM unit, for one thing the new unit is much smaller and is about $150 cheaper.