Beats watching TV!

We received the Starmate 4 receiver and an auto kit for Christmas this year. We'd been considering taking the plunge into satellite radio for a while, and apparently my parents were eavesdropping and went shopping for one. They chose this one because it was on a great Black Friday deal. Considering they did little to no research and just bought based on ads, it's been a great unit so far. My husband and are are not very technologically adept, but we set it up ourselves and got a signal right away.

Setup was easy, following the instructions in the "get started" guide. There are clear pictures showing where all the wires go, and how to hook it in to your existing stereo output if that's what you want to use. We had it up and running in under 10 minutes, included the call to Sirius to activate service.

We live in a condo building in a major city and so we were not able to get a 'pure' satellite signal with the Starmate, but we get what they call the Terrestrial signal, which is the satellite feed run through some repeaters in the city. The quality is great and we don't notice a difference between the terrestrial feed we get at home and the direct satellite signal when we're driving with it in the car.

The one disappointing thing about the car kit is that it did require an additional expense to have it professionally installed. The kit does include instructions on how to do it yourself, so if you're a car audio buff and are comfortable with pulling off panels, running cables behind your dashboard, and somehow threading the wire out the trunk of your car....you can. But for the other 99% of us, it will require about a $100 install fee. When professionally installed though, it does look like a natural part of the car. I was worried that the cable running out of our hatchback to put the antenna on the roof would look hokey and ugly, but the pros ran it under so many panels that there's really only about 3-4" of cable showing and then a flat, low-profile antenna.

The unit itself is easy to operate. The manual that accompanies it is very bare bones, but that's because there really isn't much to learn about it. You can enter a station # directly or scroll through by just hitting the left/right buttons. Holding down the little "dog" button in the middle takes you back to the last station you were on. There are buttons for up to 10 presets if you find that you're listening to certain stations more than others.

One of the coolest things about this unit is listening to sports on it. On the first line of the display, it tells you the game you're listening to: "NBA Basketball Boston vs. Dallas", and on the second line, it scrolls the current score! It updates within about 20 seconds of the announcers telling the score....so it's cool to be able to glance up at any time and know the score.

The one thing I'm disappointed with is that this unit is not usable with any portable Sirius accessories. Ideally I would have purchased a unit that would work at home, in the car, AND on the go, so I could listen while hiking, walking to work, jogging etc. But for the uses it does work for, we've found it a great enjoyment.