The rumor mill is churning away once again as the Dell DJ XM Satellite Radio/MP3 player rears it's head again. Nothing really solid to work with, but supposedly the next-generation Dell DJ will be hitting the streets in about 3 weeks or so. This is pretty close with the estimates of when the Samsung Helix and Pionner Inno will be out (late March/early April), but no word on whether the Dell DJ Satellite will have a live-reception mode like those units.

My guess is it'll remain with the live-only-when-docked functionality as I saw it back in August along side the Samsung Nexus. I definitely don't feel this unit is vaporware, having seen it with my own eyes and having the vaporware theory swatted with the reemergence of the Nexus. My guess is the delays are quite possibly because it's getting the upgrade to be XM Passport friendly. Especially with TI's MP3/Satrad chip is now available - I can't see why it wouldn't be XM Passport compatable.

[Dell DJ Site]
Thanks Ben!

Texas Instruments has announced a chip and reference design that makes it extremely simple to integrate XM's latest Connect-and-Play technology (ie, the XM Passport) into a hard-drive based player MP3 player. Or, maybe more specifically... a dock for any, that's right ANY, digital audio (iPod? hmmm...) player.

Not to mention, it's cheap and simple to integrate. OEMs just need to pay a one-time license fee of $20k plus the price of the chip, and instantly they can make an XM-Ready dock for their digital audio player that will interface with the XM Passport. Manufacturers now can even build XM Satellite Radio capability into the portable digital audio unit due to the built-in power efficiency of the design. The hardware support is pretty impressive: color LCD / NTSC displays, FM tuners, photo and video decode, rechargeable battery-based subsystem, audio codec support (AAC, AAC Plusx, MP3, WMA and others), line-in encoding, USB 2.0, and the latest DRM technologies.

I have a funny feeling these might pop up very soon in, uhm, mostly white-colored docking stations... but hey, that's all just speculation.