Delphi SkyFi3 XM Radio System Review

Delphi SkyFi3 XM Radio System Review Tiffany Young: Hi there and welcome to Neo-fight.tv, the technology show for the ‘Not-So-Geeky’. My name is Tiffany Young. Ben Freedman: And I’m Ben Freedman and XM Radio or satellite radio in general. Tiffany Young: Right. Ben Freedman: What do you think of satellite radio? Tiffany Young: I think satellite radio has come a long way since the first little portable — Ben Freedman: Since those first little wooden satellites they send up in the space and the wooden that you know, put together with the mice and the wheel, the power — Tiffany Young: I remember the first Delphi or Delphi whatever you call it. I like thought the first one and I was thinking it’ll be perfect and that it was the round, first generation one where it had the little antenna that was — anyway I thought— Ben Freedman: Is that like a boom box or like a walk — like an iPod? Tiffany Young: Yeah it’s like one of these little guys right here and I thought okay, I’ll just take it running, I couldn’t get a signal anywhere. Ben Freedman: Right. Tiffany Young: It was so frustrating. I spend the whole running mad and my Delphi. Anyway, I made it. Ben Freedman: This is the thing with satellite radio, you either kind of get a signal or you don’t you know, and if you’re indoors or in a basement or — you know it’s not like radio 1:18 gets further away, gets static here and what have you. Do you have XM in your car or satellite? Tiffany Young: I do but then I had it for the first year, subscription runs out, chooses to renew. I never renewed it; I just didn’t use it as – Ben Freedman: Because cars or really perfect place for XM radio because you always have clear access with the sky unless you’re in parking basement I guess. Tiffany Young: Exactly. Ben Freedman: This has always been my concern is that you know, I’ve got an mp3 player that I can put my own music on or I can download music or you know, I could just get over the air like AM, FM which has always been pretty good. But I guess a big draw and I’ve been using this for a little bit with XM radio is commercial free, you can see the title of the song. You can see the artist and all that kind of stuff. So I really kind of like it, it’s kind of nice. Tiffany Young: Newer cars though, they have you know, all the radios are transmitting now you know, not all of them but a lot of them names that song, artist you know just — Ben Freedman: You mean over satellite or regular? Tiffany Young: No, just regular AM, FM you know on your screen of your dash board and so — Ben Freedman: We also have – we have like 200 channels to chose from or whatever it is, you know I can choose 80’s, I could use 90’s, I can do 70’s, very specialized. Tiffany Young: It is specialized but then you think of your iPod and then you’ve got your iPod and so many of these cars now come with iPod docks and stations, your duplicating, you know, it’s kind of like pick one or the other and then you have to pay for subscription on this on top it. So how many songs can you download and keep you know for the price that you pay for a subscription? Ben Freedman: So actually it’s essentially enough, maybe this part we’re looking at today is — Tiffany Young: Subscription. Ben Freedman: Subscription. Maybe this part we’re looking today is a good middle ground, this is — we have two products here that fit together, his is the Delphi, Delphy? Tiffany Young: Delphi. Ben Freedman: Delphi KSYFi3 system. This is the system we’re talking about here and it’s kind of what you’re talking about, it’s kind of a mixture so this is like a little Walkman you take with you and when you plug the antenna in, the antenna kind of acts as or not the antenna, the headphones, act kind of give that away. Tiffany Young: I’m trying to figure out how to carry that, yeah? I mean, how big is the antenna? Ben Freedman: The headphones acts as your antenna, the headphones are — so we have to you know use that and I tried this out, you can get an okay signal just with this but the nice thing about this is it records XM. Tiffany Young: Okay. Ben Freedman: It records XM radios, so here’s what you can do. Let’s say you have it plugged in at home and you hooked up your big antenna on your car, you have it record and hour of XM radio then when you get out, if you want to take into your shopping center or where you’re not going to be able to get signal, you can then play back what you’ve recorded. Tiffany Young: Oh, that’s a good idea. Ben Freedman: So here are your options, you’ve got XM radio right on here, you’ve got the ability to record XM and play it back or it has a memory card slot in here. Tiffany Young: Oh okay, a micro SD. Ben Freedman: Tiny little — micro tiny little SD card and that will allow you to put your mp3s on. Tiffany Young: Now how about just the micros come in? How many — Ben Freedman: I can you can get to a gigabyte, maybe two gigabytes. Tiffany Young: A gig from micro? Ben Freedman: Yeah. By the way, unlike you know, kind of like, this is kind of halfway between the old iPods and the new iPods and that the screen is black and white, not very high resolution but it’s big, it’s a big screen. Tiffany Young: And also looks very basic it’s almost DOS spaced. Maybe it’s the lettering. Ben Freedman: Yeah, it’s kind of, it kind of looks like a generation going. I think maybe the color. It is very light, take a look at that. Tiffany Young: Too bad you cannot play movies on it. Of course I want it all what can I say? Ben Freedman: Yeah, well it’s black and white, low res screen so it’s not kind of a bit. But what do you think of the weight? Tiffany Young: The weight’s nice. I mean it’s very — Ben Freedman: Well, you can put that in your pocket, very easily. Tiffany Young: It’s very basic, that’s for sure. I mean it does what it says and — Ben Freedman: Yeah, but does a recording. Does the mp3s? And it will play back the XM radio. Now, the whole idea behind this is that it’s part of a system right? So again, this is the Delphi, the SKYFi3 which does the recording in the mp3s, then you can also get this which is your boom box add on. This is an additional $180. So when you put these two together, you’re into it for close three and a half. Tiffany Young: $180? Ben Freedman: $180, yeah. Tiffany Young: Oh. Ouch. Ben Freedman: Yeah, so hundred and — right, so this goes in here, okay? Tiffany Young: Okay. Ben Freedman: And now you’ve got a big antenna in here that it’s hooked up to. Tiffany Young: Okay. Ben Freedman: And here at the office it actually picks up very well. Let me turn this on and we’ll find something that’s going to direct mode. Tiffany Young: Does this have an output jacks anywhere? No? Ben Freedman: Yeah, I’ll show you that in a second. Tiffany Young: Oh it does, oh okay. Ben Freedman: Yeah. Tiffany Young: Oh, he’s getting to it. Ben Freedman: Okay, so here we are, I’m in the 80’s mode. Tiffany Young: The best mode? Is that the best mode? Ben Freedman: Yeah. — Tiffany Young: Oh okay. I was just a toddler like this — Ben Freedman: So, well sound’s not bad. Not as loud as the some of the Bose 300 and 400 in all those things but. Tiffany Young: This doesn’t have the bass; it’s missing a little bit of bass. Ben Freedman: Yeah, it has a bit — it has, I don’t know if you can hear me, it has a button here for extra base so let me hit that. Tiffany Young: Okay. Ben Freedman: Oh, that was extra base. It has the base on so. Anyway, so here its stocking, it’s charging, you can record while it’s in here and I had at home, I had a difficulty getting a signal, let me turn this down. A difficulty getting a signal in certain places in my house and so what you can do here is this back actually will pop off. Let me turn this around, oh there’s a handle here, kind of cool. This back pops off and inside here is your antenna on a long piece of wire. Okay, so what you can do is you can take this, it’s going to be somewhere now kind of defeats the portability in this of it but there’s a lot of wire here, you can un-spool the wire and then this can go near a window or somewhere south facing where you’ll get a better signal. Tiffany Young: Because that probably will work on your boat pretty well you think? Ben Freedman: Oh it’ll be great. So it comes in with this built in antenna system which is kind of nice. Tiffany Young: Just in case. Okay? Ben Freedman: All right. Tiffany Young: All right. Ben Freedman: Okay, wind this back up again. Tiffany Young: Can you record a XM radio just on your computer? Ben Freedman: Well I think some of these services like XM have a computer service as well so — Tiffany Young: This record on to your computer right? Ben Freedman: Yeah, you don’t have to use satellite. They have a streaming service as well. Tiffany Young: Okay, just curious. Ben Freedman: And so you can stream onto your computer as well as listening this way and I think your one superscription price gets to the computer and the satellite. Tiffany Young: It’s right here, okay. Ben Freedman: Yeah. If you look on the back here, there is indeed auxiliary in and headphones and it’s battery powered to so you can take this, pull out the cord and take this with you. Tiffany Young: So what’s the price of the whole system? $180 for this and?-- Ben Freedman: And $30 for that guys yeah. It’s you know, not the cheapest but it’s a full system now. You also get with that, don’t answer yet. Let me show you what else you got, you also get this – Tiffany Young: If you order now. Ben Freedman: Which is the car adapter which come with and antenna and a power supply and this cradle and this cradle will you know, suck on to your wind shield or I’ve got it here to where it’ll fit into your vent. Tiffany Young: Okay. Ben Freedman: Right and let me pull this out and this will then slide into this little docking station, kind of nice — like that. Tiffany Young: Okay. Ben Freedman: And now, by the way kind of hang it vertically like I’ve got it here or you can press the display button and there it is, vertical, I don’t know if you can see that. I hold down the display button, it turns horizontal. Right, so I can have this like this in my car and I’ve got these preset buttons on here and if I’ve record music, I can play it back to the car or if I have the antenna on the car which again plugs into the dock. Now, I’ve got a car system. So it’s not, well, it is not the cheapest system you know, for playing back music, you know, you’ve got between the fact that you’ve got the home dock or portable if you want to go running or whatever, bicycling, a car dock. Tiffany Young: if you can get a signal. Ben Freedman: Well yeah, but even if you don’t have the signal, you can record it or play your mp3s. Tiffany Young: Okay, I have absolutely no use for —personally, I think it’s over priced, I think it’s sort of trying to sort of trying to copy something that already been done and been done much better than this. That’s my opinion on it. Ben Freedman: But you’re not a huge satellite radio aficionado. Tiffany Young: I’m not you know, that’s true and some people are so you know, all of that you know, like some other things matter personal opinion and I don’t know. I mean, what do you think? Ben Freedman: Well I think it’s not, it is a little pricey it’s not the cheapest thing out there but at the same time I like the fact that it’s a system. I like the fact that you’ve got your home base or portable you’ve, got your Walkman, your mp3 player type thing and you’ve got your car thing all in one and for those of us who don’t have this stuff built into our car, it’s kind of nice to be able to add these thing and take them from car to car. Tiffany Young: Well let me ask you this, how do you actually get then — if you don’t have a built in, if you don’t have an auxiliary out in your car, how do you get that to play on your — Ben Freedman: It will play like with an FM transmitter or you can plug in. Tiffany Young: Okay, so you have to do it like that FM? Ben Freedman: Yeah, that’s right and there’s different ways you can do it. It’ll clip on to your — it actually is a very good FM transmitter that comes with in the package. Tiffany Young: But then you stop to have an FM station that you’re going to be able to really get a clear — Ben Freedman: This is sure. Tiffany Young: And someone like V-neck. It’s hard to get it clear. Ben Freedman: That’s right. Tiffany Young: It’s — Ben Freedman: I mean it’s not perfect. I guarantee there are flaws in the system. Tiffany Young: Okay. So are we going to rate this? Ben Freedman: Yeah, I give this a four out of five. I still am not 100% comfortable with satellite radio in general because of the fact that it drops out as you say indoors and stuff. But with the ability to record it, and then the ability to put in your mp3 as well, it think goes a long way to alleviating that. It’s a little bit pricey but I think you get a lot for your package so I give it a four to five. Tiffany Young: I’m like so evil on this one. I don’t know I don’t sound very optimistic at all but my honest opinion is it’s a one out of a five. It’s just — Ben Freedman: One out of five? Tiffany Young: Yup, there’s just nothing about the system that I find useful, it think it’s over priced. I think it’s — the fact that you have to use it with an FM transmitter. I just find that to be bothersome at least in— Ben Freedman: That’s only in the car. You’ve got this docking — Tiffany Young: But I think the sound on this thing is not very good. Ben Freedman: It’s not as good and the Bose or some of the other ones. Tiffany Young: Yeah, for the price you know, I would expect more. Anyway, so it’s one out of five for me on this. Ben Freedman: That’s one out of five for Tiffany, four out of five for me, that is five out of ten for the Delphi SKYFi3recorder and the Delphi sound system. Tiffany Young: Sorry Delphi just you know, not crazy about it. Ben Freedman: Yeah, well and it’s a second you know, maybe the next generation. I also was going to talk at a point for the non color, non high resolution thing. Tiffany Young: Yeah that was nothing. Ben Freedman: It looks a little basic. I agree with you there. Tiffany Young: It does. Ben Freedman: So okay. Well, that’s the Delphi SKYFi system and we’ll be right back in just a second. Stay tuned. Andy Walker: Hey. I'm Andy Walker. Have you just bought a new computer with Windows Vista on it or maybe about an old XP computer that you’ve upgraded? Well, we've just created an amazing new DVD that’ll teach you everything you need to know about the new operating system for Microsoft. It is called “Getting Started with Windows Vista”. In this DVD there are three sections and one is Out of the Box. What you need to do is as soon as you start up Vista. Number two is Vista Essentials. These are things you need to know everyday to make a computer experience amazing; anti-virus, security, all kinds of new features that Vista offers. And finally, the Tips and Tricks, things you need to know that nobody else would have told you that make you a vista guru. For more information, check out our website at gettingstartedvideo.com. Ben Freedman: And we’re back with our second product spotlight today and you know what? You can never underestimate the importance of having a buddy. Would you agree? Tiffany Young: Yes. Ben Freedman: Buddies are important. It’s good to have and I am very happy to call you my buddy. Tiffany Young: Oh, thanks Ben. Ben Freedman: You’re welcome. Tiffany Young: You’re my buddy too. Ben Freedman: I like to think that I’m buddy and the other thing that are really important, really important are USB hubs. Tiffany Young: Because they’re sort of like a buddy? Ben Freedman: Buddies and USB hubs, I’m going somewhere with this. Tiffany Young: Okay. Ben Freedman: There is a direction to this but you have to stay with me because it’s brilliant. So USB hub is important right? You only got a couple USB ports on your computer let’s say and you want to plug in you know, four or five or six things, you need a hub. Tiffany Young: Ah, yes you do. Ben Freedman: Now let’s say that you’re buddy is sitting right next to you and you have printer or something and you have the printer plugged into your computer or you have a hard drive plugged into your computer or you have whatever, a web cam, whatever it is plugged into your computer and your buddy wants to use it. Well, now it’s difficult you know, you’ve got the web cam plugged in you’ve got this plugged in, you got that plugged in, in the hard drive or whatever, you could be messing with cables all day, you know unplugging, reach around the back, unplug it, plug anything or you could get this product. By a company called Ultra, this is the Ultra USB Buddy Hub. Tiffany Young: Ah, I see, right. Ben Freedman: You know I was going with somewhere with that. Now, what does the Buddy Hub do? Well, first of all, it’s a, what is that? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, a seven port hub, so that should keep on web cams for a little, just a little while. What do you think? Tiffany Young: Yes if we’re doing web cams. Ben Freedman: And what do you notice is different on the top of this? Tiffany Young: PC A and PC B or in or in this case, buddy A and buddy B. Ben Freedman: That’s right, there are two wholes here. Tiffany Young: I’m getting it. Ben Freedman: For two computers. So here’s what you do. You hook this one up to your computer, one up to you computer. All right let’s say that we’re office mates or buddies in the office when you’re sitting next to each other and we hook up all of our peripherals up here and when you want to use one, you push this button down and it goes into buddy A mode or PC A and if you have the button up, it’s in buddy B mode or vice versa I think probably up is A. So let’s say we’ve got you know, a web cam or a hard drive and — you know, I can keep a couple of these down when your using them and couple and then a couple of them more up and whatever you have up, goes to buddy A and whatever go down goes to buddy B. Tiffany Young: Right very good Ben. Thank you. Very explanatory. Ben Freedman: Explanatory? Tiffany Young: Explanatory. Actually this is something I could definitely, absolutely, completely use, I’m doing that —I’ve two computers at my office that I got back and forth. While one’s doing something, I’m doing something else or I’m checking, I get calls and I’m constantly unplugging printer from one into the other back and forth, back and forth. My hard drive, same thing, transfer up files so— Ben Freedman: And you can set things up with like printer sharing all that kind of stuff. Tiffany Young: So my buddy — Ben Freedman: But all that stuff doesn’t work in real life. Tiffany Young: Right, it’s just a lot of frustration and calls to technical support. Ben Freedman: You can network your hard drives but then you know, if you network your hard drives, it takes a long time to copy the file over. Tiffany Young: Yeah. Ben Freedman: Right? Because your running it full USB speed. Tiffany Young: It’s just easier for me to use some separate you know? Anyway, so my own buddy is my self in this case. Ben Freedman: You are your own best buddy. Tiffany Young: I am my own best buddy. That’s right. Ben Freedman: You know, if you can’t be buddies with yourself, who can you really be buddy with? Tiffany Young: So I’m going to be buddy A and buddy B and use this, definitely use this for my— Ben Freedman: And it’s also powered, it comes to a little power charger. So even if you’ve got seven devices you know, that consumes — if you have a laptop, you try to plug seven USBs devices into a laptop, you’re not going to have a happy laptop because there’s too much power. Tiffany Young: Which leads me to my next question, what do you know about when ran at? Like what speed? Ben Freedman: It’s USB 2, so high speed. Good enough for hard drives and all that kind of stuff. Tiffany Young: What a geeky question, oh my god. Ben Freedman: What speed does this Hub run at? And they’re all fully powered port so you can plug in your hard drive. You can plug a hard drive, an external CD ROM drive whatever and you can share it. Now, you’re limited to the length of the USB cable so it’s not like you can have one in front and one in the back, that kind of stuff. If you want to that, if like in my house, I have one printer, a laser printer, Jody, my wife uses it from down stairs when I use— because on the network and that’s okay cause network can run as long as your network you know, a long distance. Tiffany Young: The only thing with network, it’s transferring big files and stuff it takes a little bit of time. Ben Freedman: Right, this is much, much faster but I think USB, you’re only supposed to have six feet or twelve feet so it’s not good for somebody who’s way, way over like the other side of the universe. Tiffany Young: Yeah, sort of like side by side buddies. Ben Freedman: Like buddies. Tiffany Young: Or like buddy and you know, my case my own other buddy. Ben Freedman: Yes, you, yourself and you. Tiffany Young: Yes exactly. Ben Freedman: That’s right. Tiffany Young: Exactly. So yeah, I think that’s a great product. Five out from me on that one. Ben Freedman: Five out of five for you? Tiffany Young: Oh wait, what’s the price? Ben Freedman: Yeah, it’s a little more expensive than other hubs. It’s about $50. Tiffany Young: Oh, totally worth it. Ben Freedman: You can get a seven port hub for you know, $20, $30 but this one has this buddy ability here and I think that you know, it’s kind of a specialized need right? So it’s only for people that have computers that are going to be right next to each other. But if that’s your case you know, if you’re in an office. Tiffany Young: That’s exactly my case. Ben Freedman: That’s exactly your case. Tiffany Young: So unlike the Delphi you know, doesn’t work for me and not maybe totally useless to somebody else but for me it works. Ben Freedman: I will also give this a five out of five because I agree with you, I think it’s a very cool little product and it does what it says it does. It’s a little pricey, should dot it point for being a little pricey? Tiffany Young: No, God — Ben Freedman: I think $50 for a hub is still expensive. Tiffany Young: 50 dollars but yeah, how much time does it take you to unplug stuff and re-plug stuff in and it’s got the A-B buddy thing so — Ben Freedman: More than $50 worth. Tiffany Young: It’s actually $25 a piece if you think of it. Ben Freedman: Well, it’s sort of like $25 that you had to share between two people so- Tiffany Young: It would be 25 for you, 25 for me so that make it $5 less than your average USB. Ben Freedman: Right, so PC A, PC B — Tiffany Young: Got you covered. Ben Freedman: And that is the Ultra Buddy Hub which I got to tell you is a very cool little product. Tiffany Young: I agree. Ben Freedman: Five out of five to for Tiffany, Five out of five for me, ten out of ten for the Ultra Buddy Hub. Ultra Buddy Hub. Tiffany Young: Yes, and I have to be taking that one home with me. Ben Freedman: And that’s all the time that we have for the show today. Thank you for watching us. If you have a moment, please visit our website www.neo-fight.tv and so you can see all the archives, send us e-mail, sign up for our give away list thing— Tiffany Young: Any questions? Any products that you’d like to see us review drop us an email by the way keep those comments coming. Ben Freedman: Or just send us the product. Just buy it, best buy, and just send it to us. Tiffany Young: Yeah, even better. Ben Freedman: Even better. Tiffany Young: Or how about we could do another bagorama? Ben Freedman: Another bagorama. I haven’t recovered from the last bagorama yet. I’m sort of bags everywhere. Tiffany Young: I know and keep those comments coming, we love to them. Ben Freedman: And if you have an extra 30 seconds, take a look at this. [Commercial]