For Christmas, Sarah (wife) gave me a Sirius portable radio (Stiletto 10). When I first set it up at home, she had given me a home kit with the player, so I was able to setup the antenna outside to get better reception. Setting up an account was very easy, but then I noticed that our signal would cut out periodically.
Day after Christmas we were working around the house, so we wanted to listen to music, and I was becoming more and more frusterated with the reception we were getting at home, I would hear about 2 songs, and then the signal would deteriorate enough that we wouldn’t be able to hear a full song without breaks (like a bad CD).
I fought with moving the antenna around, and eventually gave up (I’ll wrestle with it this weekend again). The player barely worked outsite of our house, in the open. Needless to say, I was becoming nervous that Sarah had given me an expensive paperweight. We tried it in the car, no luck, we tried at my parents house, I was able to get some signal outside, but other than that it was pretty horrible. I still had some slim hopes that it would work at my job in NYC, and that is what really mattered.
Well, good news in the end, the signal in NYC is very strong. Apparently there are land based antennas in the city to improve signal (who knew?). I think that I have found a replacement to my mp3 player. So I might only be able to listen to Sirius at work (which is what i wanted the thing for anyway), but its really cool.