Apple car play or XM radio

[GULFMAN]

Hello All
It's been a while.
I took my first trip to Arizona from North Carolina.
Had a great time drove about 3,000 miles. I have 2002 F350 with a Bigfoot truck camper. I would like to upgrade the radio in the Truck. I was shown a Kenwood touch screen and some other's. Radio reception on the trip was in and out the whole trip got old trying to find a channel. What would be a good alternative to the original radio? The sales person said Apple Car Play connection through your phone. XM radio has a external antenna but really no good place to mount it. I really could use some good information.
Thanks

[GULFMAN]

Thank you all for your comments.
Presently I think I will try to keep it simple.
I have the free Pandora on my phone so I thinking of just purchasing a Bose wireless speaker. and mounting it in the back window.
I do have Amazon Prime I will look into there Music .
The reason I posted in the truck camper Forum is because that is what I have.

Thanks & safe travels
GULFMAN

[jimh406]

I had XM for a while, but I didn't feel it was worth a subscription. It also didn't work in a tree canopy for me. I don't know if they are better now.

I also like local radio stations when available, but there are a lot of places I drive that have no reception. For those, I download Amazon Music playlists. It comes with Amazon Prime, so it's no extra expense.

Fwiw, I've found that OEM Ford Radio reception of AM/FM is better than aftermarket radios. YMMV.

[wildtoad]

Don’t use XM, not even when it’s free. Despise their marketing with showing their price but leave out taxes, fees, and other costs. I recently replaced the low end radio (which included support for XM) with a touch screen unit with Car Play (and no XM). I can connect iPhone either by USB cable or Bluetooth/WIFI , listen to all my music on my phone, stream Apple Music, send and receive TXT messages via voice, listen to free radio, navigate with Apple Maps, and there is a “radio” feature for internet based radio services.

I will say the USB connection is more stable than the blue tooth as it seems to drop out from time to time.

If you don’t need all the features, and our existing radio has an AUX in connection just plug your iPhone in.

[Bumpyroad]

I have the ala-carte programming on XM. IIRC it is about $8.00 a month for 50 stations, some extra pay. I have it on auto pay and I don't have to renew it or argue with them about renewing if you have annual plan.
bumpy

[PButler96]

Grit dog wrote:
Oh boy, everybody grab their morning glass of Metamucil and listen for a sec.

LOL

[RickW]

I replaced my old 2004 terrestrial/xm radio with a newer touchscreen unit with AM/FM radio, carplay/phone, gps and back up camera.

I mostly use the iheart app to listen to my favorite radio wherever I have cell service, otherwise just listen to the playlist or saved podcasts. If really remote, I have a portable weather radio for updates.

As a bonus, I also installed a backup camera on the TC connected to the new unit.

[mbloof]

As others have mentioned:

- if your around cities you can use the radio (stations go in/out as OP mentioned)

- if your on most 'major' highways you can stream with your cell phone (until of course your out of cell phone range and of course it uses DATA which can be costly)

- if you can find a place to mount it, you can use XM radio but have to listen to whatever they are broadcasting (and its not cheap)

- while cars/trucks have moved from having just AM/FM to radio+cassette to radio+CD player to radio+CD player+Bluetooth you could simply feed CD's (with just audio or +10 CD's worth of MP3's stuffed on it) or you could load your cell phone up with a bunch of MP3's (most cell phones these days have at least 64GB of storage - 100x what a CD holds) and stream for free from your cell phone.

There are a BUNCH of options for car/truck audio - why your asking in a Truck camper specific forum is anyones guess...


- Mark0.

[Bedlam]

Like someone else posted, I used to listen the Canadian stations across the Great Lakes in my youth. I am still close enough to pick up some Canadian stations, but many are getting mixed with local Spanish language stations father south and make my listening sound like I am in the DMZ.

In poor reception areas, radio and cell will be worthless and only satellite in open skies will be a choice. I prefer local programing and pre recorded media where there is no reception. I travel to experience the differences in culture and will not be trying bring in CKLW or WMMS or KISW or KXLE or KSIM when not local.

[Hemi_Joel]

Every time I buy a new truck, it comes with XM radio, but as soon as the free subscription expires I cancel. It's one of those things where you have to listen to what they want to play at the time. And then I would scroll through a hundred channels or so and not find anything I want to listen to.

So now I use my phone to tune into Pandora radio. They have a free version which I listened to for a few years, but now I do pay the subscription fee to get rid of ads, have more power to control what I'm listening to such as rewind, repeat, etc. Plus it has more bandwidth and higher fidelity, as well as the ability to create and listen to offline playlists for when you don't have a signal.

Plus I tune in to YouTube as well. There's a lot of play lists where you can pick one and set it on autoplay and it will just go through the whole list.
Between the two, There is always something to listen to whether it be music of any genre or educational, Bible study, motivational, or just plain entertainment.

[Z-Peller]

XM for years both truck & camper. Always get news, sports, comedy, every kind of music etc etc…. Arizona to Newfoundland to Northwest Territories… XM magnetic puck on front hood of truck and route very small wire under hood/ thru door trim to under dash.
Do not use yearly auto renew!….phone every year and negotiate new deal with customer service for best price.

[pianotuna]

Actually as a child I would listen to CBC Radio on the am band--it was, at the time available from a quite powerful transmitter. It would drop out somewhere in Nebraska. (about 1000 miles)

I do listen to radio on my cell phone--which has unlimited data. I have a booster, but that has only been used twice in 12 years.

Apple is via the cell phone? If so, your comment applies to it, too.

[deserteagle56]

pianotuna wrote:
Why would one pay for apple car play when there are thousands of free radio stations already available on the wobbly wide web.


BBC
CBC
NPR

Come out here to the middle of nowhere and see how many of those "free" radio stations, on the web or via antenna, you can pick up. (Your cell phone will be useless most places also.)

I used to have two Sirius/SM subscriptions but gave up on them due to the constant battle over subscription prices. Now all the music I want to hear is on a flash drive so I hear only what I like to listen to.

[Grit_dog]

Oh boy, everybody grab their morning glass of Metamucil and listen for a sec.
XM, obviously, is a set of “radio” stations that play whatever you select.
Apple car play is not. It is just an interface to make your car stereo more IPhone “friendly” and a means to operate your iPhone through your car stereo. (Similar to Bluetooth but not with the Apple “apps” appearing on your stereo screen.)
With it you can stream music or play your downloaded music. But Car Play doesn’t have its own music.
Car play doesn’t require phone service to work but it only plays what is already on your phone or streaming music (when you have internet service).
Car Play is either wired or wireless (through Bluetooth) depending on the features of that stereo.
No subscription required for CarPlay.
Bottom line, replacing a 20 year old stereo with features from the last decade is an upgrade if you want to use your phone with your stereo.

[pianotuna]

Why would one pay for apple car play when there are thousands of free radio stations already available on the wobbly wide web.


BBC
CBC
NPR