Originally Posted by Jim1348

I have experience with all of them. It depends on a large extent on what your tastes are and where you are going to listen. I started with XM Radio as an option on my Garmin StreetPilot 2730 GPS. It worked very well for me. It was used primarily in my work vehicle and could be transported easily to my personal vehicle. When my wife bought a new Dodge Grand Caravan a couple of years ago it came with a free year of Sirius satellite radio. I had already bought her an XM portable about a year prior, but dropped the subscription since she had the free year of Sirius. In the meantime I also dropped my XM for the Garmin since my work vehicle has a mobile computer with EVDO. That allowed me to listen to XM, and later Sirius on line. Anyway, once her free year ran out we had a decision to make. She wanted to subscribe to Sirius, of course, since her van had the receiver built in. Then I found out about Slacker radio. I bought a Slacker G1 for her and it has been an excellent replacement for Sirius. I also had four HD radios at one time. My first was the Radiosophy HD100 in the barn. Then I bought a used one for my pickup truck. Sometime later I bought a Sony component tuner and a Sangean HDR1. Frankly, HD radio clearly has some limitations. It is only allowed 1% of the power of the main signal. The killer for me, however, is a format change locally. My local station had All Comedy Radio on 93.7-2. A few weeks back they switched to another format and that has caused me to lose all interest in it. I have sold the Sony and Sangean already. I do still have the Radiosophy in my horse barn and a JVC in my pickup truck. I will keep those since the JVC has an auxiliary input and CD player. My pickup is a 1995 model and still had a cassette player! I realize that your specific question, however, is satellite vs. HD radio. Given that choice I would go satellite. We had taken long family trips during the time we had XM and then later Sirius. It was nice to have coverage everywhere we went. As far as commercial free on satellite, well that can be misleading, too. I did hear commercials on the comedy stations of XM and Sirius. I am glad that I tried HD radio because I like getting the experience with new technology, but it really doesn't have a great outlook right now. I really didn't lose any money on the two radios I just sold. The Sony was bought and had a rebate. I sold it for what my net cost was. The Sangean was bought at a clearance when they closed the Sharper Image at the Mall of America. My Radiosophy was also bought with a rebate. The net cost was about what an analog radio would cost at a typical retailer, BUT the Radiosophy is much more selective and sensitive than any other AM/FM radio I have ever owner. The JVC was an Ebay purchase and very reasonable. It was time for me to move from cassettes, which I really never used, to CDs. If you only want to listen in the vehicle, a permanent install will be great. If you want to go portable there are some portable satellite radios then can be used in the vehicle. The installation will not be as neat, however. I would take a look at Slacker Radio, too, just because I think it is good to know what your choices are. Now that I have sold two of my HD radios, I need to learn more about internet wifi radios. Good luck with your decision!