when is CES Ryan?

Ryan, is there a possibility that the new inno is not around because the merged companies expect the stiletto 2 to replace it? This would of course assume that the stiletto 2 is awaiting merger approval before full-scale production and that it has a dual-mode chipset to receive both XM and SIRI.

What do you think?

January

ask Pioneer, there you might find your answer. That's about all I can say.

The most obvious reasons would seem to be

a) Sluggish retail makes it relatively unimportant;

b) They haven't sold the ones they already have;

c) Pending litigation from RIAA

Ryan,

I was wondering if you or anyone knew about when the new Stiletto 2 will be available for sale?

Any info would be most appreciated.

Thanks
DW

@Zach: I don't think so. The Stiletto 2 should be out within the next few weeks. There is the possibility it will be made interoperable via a firmware update, but there's no hard proof of that.

I think it's purely an issue of cost and return. And I think XM has just been tightening the belt... unfortunately, that doesn't help much at retail.

merger or not, they both have to bring new products out WAY in advance for the holiday season, build up inventory and market the hell out of them--If they have the same units this year again and are low on inventory, it makes for a terrible Xmas holiday seaon--Sirius has to really ramp up as their strong point has always been retail and xm has been oem---i know both are really increasing oem but if sirius can continue their winning ways on the retail side, and with more oem finally coming into play for sirius(they have been behind xm here) then the sub numbers can approach 850k plus for the 4th q

As Ryan said... retail hand held market is week.. very week

So, why have a new product that may be obsolete if a merger is aproved? Why not develope something that is a compition killer if the Merger is not allowed? How about a hand held with so many advanced features, tiered programming, 20 GB storage, real battery life, several tuners to allow several channels to be recorded, I mean a real killer unit. but wait untill the merger is not allowed, then anouce your walking away from the merger and anounce new products the same day along with tiered pricing.

tier pricing guaranteed by Mel NOT to happen if merger doesnt go through--I was referring to ANY units(portable, auto etc.)

I don't see much re3alistic room for improvement on the Inno.

RIAA issues prevent the idea of adding more memory. Maybe a MicroSD slot for WMA/MP3, but 50 hours of recorded programming is pretty nice as it is.

Battery life and size is pretty limited by the fact that it's a handlheld satellite radio receiver. The tuner and antenna can only be so small and the abttery has to power them. Only so much you can do.

Video? You run into the memory issue again. And why improve the display if you're not doing video.

I could see slightly better battery life, a Micro SD slot, and better time-shifting controls, but is that enough to get people to buy a new $200+ unit?

And Jeff, not going to happen.

Don't ask Pioneer -- XM designed it; Pioneer manufactured it.

The real reason, IMO: OEM is where it's at, not retail. Sirius needed to come out with a new version that was smaller and fixed some of the issues; the Inno/Helix was the right size.

best strategy is to wait for the news. if the merger goes through then release a dominating product eqipt with everything including the xm and siri signal. Even if the merger does not go through I wonder if they would be willing to make a product that still carrys both services and will allow consumers to get subs from both. Even if the merger doesnt go they could still work together without competing. Prive that their is enough market share in the undustry.

>>>> best strategy is to wait for the news. if the merger goes through then release a dominating product eqipt with everything including the xm and siri signal.

This is just totally unrealistic. It is difficult to believe they are spending much effort on working on such a device at this time (since the merger hasn't been approved and appears to be a 50/50 shot).

I believe it will be a very long time after the merger is announced before a portable dual-capable receiver is available. Not within the first year, that's almost for certain, since they've said it will be that long before ANY kind of receiver is available. Two years? Longer?

I can think of several features missing in the Inno that are needed. More memory is an obvious one. Even if it is just 10 gigs, its still a HUGE improvement. That would allow us to import our mp3 list without totalling destroying the amount of space you can have for timeshifted content.

Another big missing feature is Wi-Fi support. Many of us don't work outside, but would like live content at work, in the gym, etc. and we aren't in major markets that have repeaters available. Hence we are stuck listening to time shifted content only.

Battery life isn't horrible, but it could definitely be beefed up.

Your gym has WiFi?

what about those rumors of Pioneer designing an "inno" type device for Sirius? Think i saw a post somewhere about how XM was rather upset that Pioneer was infact working with Sirius too. By the By......the inno is 10 times better than the Stilletto. The inno is a superior product from signal reception all the way down to software intergration. Why would XM feel the need to rush something out there(ala sirius) when they are the clear leaders in this field?

CalgoldenBear, why do you sound surprised that a gym has WiFi? Gyms have offices, right?

Sure, the gym's office might have WiFi. Why they would allow the members access to their WiFi I don't know. I live in the Bay Area which is a fairly connected place and have never heard of it. Just seems odd to me.

But back to the Inno. To me the WiFi features seem pointless. What's the difference between timeshifting the XM music channels and listening to them live? None of the XM Online channels offer anything that would be improved by broadcasting live vs time shifted.

As for the 10 gigs of memory, I still think you have an issue with the RIAA.And if an Inno with 1 GB of memory costs $200, how much would this 10 GB Inno cost?

I love my XM. I listen to it all day at work, in my car, the wife has one in her car and we pay for the in-laws to have it. We don't have an Inno because of the cost. We still have the old MyFi and an iPod. One device to control them all would be nice, but the average consumer doesn't need or want it.

Yea some gyms do have WiFi, or their neighbors have open WiFi. Or, some of us at higher end jobs have gyms built right on the premises as a corporate perk.

And some of us who enjoy listening to the news or talk channels would definitely be affected by time-shifting the content. Who wnats to hear discussion of the market from yesterday, or last weeks world news, or your college football teams game from two weeks ago? The same argument you use could be used to defeat the point of all satrad and go with something that pregetches content like Slacker onto an mp3 device. I don't want to listen to just music at work, which has full WiFi at all of my locations. Its very disjointed trying to follow a conversation on a talk channel when you are constantly walking into and out of buildings in a midmarket city with no repeaters.

Hell even if they just streamed the XMO content, I could at least listen to POTUS, Bob Edwards, and O&A.

As anyone with an iPhone or Stiletto knows, there are very few wifi spots that will allow you to log on w/o a password. It's just a feature to put on the box. Honestly I'm as impressed with the Inno a year and a half later as I was on day one. The Stiletto wifi sucks balls and to release an improved version less than a year after the initial release shows it wasn't ready for retail.

As long as they put WEP/WPA encryption on the system and allow you to load certificates, then you should cover most of the WiFi locations.

I have no clue what sorta capabilities the Stilletos WiFi comes with, but I think this is one area that they can improve on greatly for users in business areas who have the net, but are rarely at their desk to stream online content. Hell I'd be happy if I could just stream the feed through my PPC-6700s WiFi, but I don't know of any way to do that.