| I decide a while back I wanted satellite radio. After looking into Sirius and XM and their respective programming I decided XM suited me better. I liked their programming and the fact that their listener base was almost triple that of Sirius. So all I had to do was figure out which hardware route to take. I currently have an older Sony minidisc head unit that doesn't support XM and a Sony CD changer that is controlled by the HU. If I decided to go with a new HU with XM capability I could either go with another Sony that was XM ready so I could continue to use the CD changer or get an Alpine I was looking at and lose the CD changer. Or I could just get the Delphi Skyfi unit so I could use it in the house and buy the boombox for my office. As I started looking around at the HU option I found that you couldn't find the XM receiver for the Sony(sounds like they stopped making it) so I focused on the Apline line. They had some decent low to midrange models but I wanted a unit with at least two lines of text so it could display as much XM info as possible. I was then faced with paying $400-500 for a HU then another $250 for the XM receiver that’s required. Add in the wiring and antenna and I was looking at spending ~$800 to replace the perfectly good system I already had and I wouldn't have my CD changer anymore. The only drawback to the Delphi unit was that the receiver and docking station are bulky. There is no good place to mount it where it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. But I thought I could live with that since I could plug it into the RCA input in the back of the HU instead of using the RF modulator and keep my CD changer. So after weighing my options and agonizing way too much about something so insignificant in my life I chose the Delphi Skyfi. So I go out and buy the receiver and the car kit. I stopped at Radio Shack to pick up a cable that had the small stereo jack on one end and the RCA connections on the other. Another issue I had was that the only power cable that came with the car kit was the cigarette lighter plug. Initially I thought I could just cut off the plug and tap into the car's power but after I got it I noticed that it converted the car's 12 volt power to 6 volt into the Skyfi. Radio Shack didn't have any kind of inline 12 to 6 volt converter so I bought an auxiliary cigarette lighter plug that I could splice into the car's power behind the head unit and just plug the XM receiver’s plug into it where it would be hidden. Turns out the one point I was stuck on during the decision process(the ability to keep my CD changer and still connect the XM receiver directly to the HU) became a moot point. I thought I had two RCA inputs in the back of the Sony HU, but it turns out I only have one and the changer is using it . Another thing is that the HU won’t recognize the signal through the RCA inputs from the Skyfi. I still have to keep the changer’s cable plugged into it’s plug and the Skyfi plugged into the RCA input jacks. So what’s happening is I select the CD player mode and it’s receiving the data signal from the changer and shows the disc and track info on the HU but the audio is coming from the Skyfi. So for the time being I just have XM and not the CD changer. Open to suggestions on how to work around that mess. I've only had satellite radio for a day now but I don't know how I ever lived without it. The only problem is that my inferior human brain can't listen to more than one station at a time. There's so much good stuff. My reception has been fine but I haven't really tested it yet. I would definitely recommend satellite radio. Now I just need to pick up the boombox and home docking station. Here are the pictures of how it's currently installed. Not very pretty but it gets the job done. I was thinking of moving the Multichacker out of the lower DIN space but the Skyfi and docking station may still be too big to fit there. 
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Jonathan Howlett
AIM-JRHZ32
1993 Ultra Red Twin Turbo
1990 Pearl Yellow Twin Turbo(Deceased)
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SZR: XM Radio/Delphi Skyfi review and install pics. - 
