[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Now that I’ve published the Radio Stream Transcoding Bible (which has, in the meantime, been frontpaged by MoDaCo and All About Symbian!), I’ve received several questions and a lot of help requests on listening to Sirius streams on all mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian etc.) This article will surely help them a lot. (Note that I’ll also publish a similar article on XM Radio very soon).

Sirius Satellite Radio is one of two satellite radio services operating in the United States and Canada, along with XM Satellite Radio. It also has Internet streaming, which needs specialized clients because of the need for authorization. (Sirius’ streams aren’t free.)

1. If you have a Windows Mobile device...

... then, all you’ll need (unless you have VERY specific needs – more on them later) is SiriusWM5 downloadable HERE for free, for both Pocket PC’s (Windows Mobile 6 Professional / Classic) and MS Smartphones (Windows Mobile 6 Standard).

This app, which is just a front-end for either the built-in (Pocket) Windows Media Player, is really easy to use – you just fill in your official, Sirius login / password credentials in File / Settings (Guest accounts are disabled – don’t tick in “Guest”):

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusWM5Credentials.png

and, after saving this info, select the channel you’d like to listen to, enter the captcha text (alternatively, you’ll can also click Play (right softkey) and enter the number it says) and the playback will begin, with the song metadata (artist / title) displayed at the bottom of the screen, while the channel image in the top left corner.

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusInsideAChannel.png

Note that the metadata is only displayed in the GUI of the app, not inside the player:

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusWM5TCPMPBackgrounPlayback.png

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/SiriusWM5NosoundMetadataInWMP.jpg

Also note that, while you can use TCPMP to play back the stream, you may have a little less power consumption and a little quicker handset if you just stick with the default WMP. The reason for this is that TCPMP consumes about 4% more CPU cycles at 624 MHz than WMP when playing back WMA. Note that, fortunately, SiriusWM5 itself doesn’t contain about anything: when run in the background, about 0.1% CPU cycles and, in the foreground, with activated song metadata, about ~1%. (Again, on a 624 MHz Xscale PXA-270).

1.1	Additional goodies

In last September, the developers of SiriusWM5 started working on a vastly enhanced (and also XM Radio-compliant) version of the app. See for example THIS for more info. THIS thread may be also of interest: it elaborates on what the developers plan: transcoders running on the clients’ PPC’s etc:

1.2 When NOT to use?

If you have a Windows Mobile device, in most cases, SiriusWM5 will just suit you great. In some cases, however, you’ll want to use a transcoder to be able to listen to high-quality (!) Sirius streams over a slow GPRS connection. This is what SiriusWM5 can't provide - after all, WMA itself is useless when it comes to delivering quality sound at GPRS (read: 32 kbps bitrate at most) speeds. Then, you'll need to turn to a HE-AAC v2-capable solution.

2. uSirius-based transcoding

To be able to transcode Sirius on your desktop computer, you’ll need uSirius, which is a free download and is, in some respects (except for preserving the song metadata / other textual broadcast info), better than SiriusWM5. It’s available HERE; the latest, tested version is 1.0 Release Candidate 5.

Note that, in order to be able to access the high-quality, 128 kbps original streams, you need to subscribe to the CD-quality additional pack - currently for $2.99 a month. If you aren’t a subscriber, I don’t see much point in trying to running a local transcoder for you as that of SiriusWM5 doesn’t degrade the sound quality much – using a 32 kbps stereo WMA as can be seen in HERE, its sound quality is acceptable. As it’s transcoding a stream of already-degraded sound quality, you won’t get far better sound quality with a transcoder running on your device either.

However, Palm, iPhone, Blackberry and Symbian users, who don’t have a native front-end for Sirius, MUST rely on local transcoding. For them, the following three sections will be essential. As you’ll see, I provide you with an in all cases (even over NAT’ed connections!) working and fully remote controllable (you can listen to any of the original Sirius channels) solution.

2.1 Using uSirius

After you install and start uSirius, click the Settings button and fill in your username / password pair:

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/UsiriusProvideLoginPwd.png

Press OK and click the now-activated Start (the mouse is hovering over it in the next screenshot):

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/UsiriusStart.png

Now, click the XBMC button (the fifth from the top) and select a target directory to export the local URL’s the streams of uSirius can be accessed at by the external transcoder tools:

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/xbmcURLExport.png

and rename them to *.m3u:

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/RenameStrmToM3U.png

(a Total Commander screenshot of doing this)

Now, you’ll need to change all occurrences of http:// to mms:// in all these files. You can do this by hand; however, if you prefer automatizing this task, download Replace in Files from HERE. Install it and let it start; quickly fill in the fields as in the following screenshot:

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/repliaceInFilesInAction.png

and press Replace All. You’ll be shown a success report:

Image link: http://www.winmobiletech.com/012008Sirius/repliaceInFilesInAction2.png

You’ll need to import these m3u playlist files in the different transcoders – either Orb or Winamp. In the following section, I elaborate on both.