I've had satellite radio in my car for just about a year. And boy, do I love it. (In fact, I think I love it more than most people love their pets.) There's nothing like hopping in the car at lunch to check in with Al on The O'Franken Factor, or catching an NBA game on the way home from work.

On the flip side, there's also nothing like pulling into the driveway with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter and having to make that awful choice: Do I sit wedged in the car for another half hour to hear the end of the game, or do I head inside and flop down on the couch for some blissful after-work (but sans basketball) relaxation?

The solution is clear, of course: I need to get satellite radio in the house as well as in the car. The current crop of "plug-and-play" tuners (those little ones you can move from house to car to boombox) are definitely convenient, but I've been looking for something with a more "permanent" look for my home system. So when I heard about Kenwood's latest satellite radio invention, the DT-7000S, I was pretty excited. The DT-7000S is a component-style, full-sized SIRIUS satellite radio tuner with a big blue LCD display and some pretty futuristic styling. I decided to bring it home and put it through its paces, CrutchfieldAdvisor-style.



First impressions
When the DT-7000S arrived at my desk, I couldn't wait to check it out. I pulled it out of the box and plugged it in, just to get a feel for how it looked. Immediately, word spread around the department. Folks started stopping by my cubicle to "borrow a rubber band" (read: take a peek at the tuner), and the response was overwhelmingly positive. As for me, I totally dug the silver-and-blue cosmetic, although I was a little surprised at how lightweight the tuner felt.

The tuner offers a bank of numerical buttons to the left of the LCD, for entering stream (channel) numbers directly. To the right of the LCD, you get buttons for saving songs to memory, scrolling through preset banks, adjusting the display, and selecting "direct" or "preset" stream access. Two rotary knobs located on the top of the unit (check out the photo above) let you scroll through channels and categories. I loved the tactile "click click click" of the rotary knobs, and the LCD was bright enough to read easily, even right below a window with sunshine streaming in.

On the back panel of the tuner, I noticed that along with the standard RCA analog outputs and optical digital output, there's an RS-232 (serial) terminal. Very mysterious. I consulted the manual and found that the serial port wasn't for hooking the tuner up to a computer, as I had guessed, but instead allows it to interface with "compatible third-party control systems." Kenwood recommends that it only be used by professional system installers.

Making the connections
When it comes to hooking up the DT-7000S, I've got one word for you: easy. The toughest part about the installation was finding a spot for the tuner on my overcrowded A/V rack. In the end, I made some room by relegating my VCR to the floor (hey, I never use it anyway) and putting the DT-7000S in its place. I have to say that while the tuner looked cool sitting on my desk at work, it was a momentary shock to see its silver face and leggy profile perched among my collection of black, rectangular, standard-sized components. I expect this could be a drawback in some people's eyes, but hey — it's radio from space, right? I guess it's only fitting that the tuner look a little like a Mars rover. Anyhow, it didn't take long for me to get used to the cosmetics.

With the location settled, installation was hardly more involved than hooking up a CD player. I just plugged in the antenna (not included, by the way), connected a set of analog RCA cables from the tuner's output to an available input on my Onkyo TX-8511 stereo receiver, and plugged in the power. I set the antenna outside on my patio, and after a few anxious moments of "Acquiring Signal" on the LCD screen, I was ready to roll with the dog! I can see the DT-7000S making a really cool stand-alone bedroom or office system, too — you'd just need to connect the analog outputs directly to a pair of powered speakers.

The DT-7000S shows off its analog and digital RCA outputs, antenna connection, and RS-232 serial port.

(As shown in the photo above, the DT-7000S also has an optical digital output for connection to a receiver with a compatible input. Most receivers sold today are multichannel, for home theater, and nearly all have optical digital inputs, so chances are good that you'll be able to take advantage of this feature. You will probably experience a small improvement in sound quality if you use the digital output.)

A note on reception: The three SIRIUS satellites are in a moving orbit up there in space. So, while a spot on my patio gave me perfect reception at certain times of the day, the signal faded out at others. The best location to install a SIRIUS antenna is on the roof of your house, pointing straight up. For this review, I used the Terk SIR6. It's weatherproof, and comes with a 30-foot cable and a universal bracket that you can mount to a wall, roof, or satellite dish. Plus, mounting hardware's included! Highly recommended.

The Terk SIR6 SIRIUS antenna.

Feature-packed
First, I have to say that I love the fact that SIRIUS displays 32 characters for song title and artist info, rather than XM's 16 characters. In my opinion, this is one of SIRIUS' big advantages, especially now that XM has gone commercial-free on its music channels. And the DT-7000S does each and every one of those characters justice. With the display in "large" mode, the text is easy to see from across the room, and the scrolling is neither too fast to read nor irritatingly slow. Props!

Kenwood gives you four banks of 20 presets, for a total of 80 — more than twice as many as most plug-and-play tuners. Presets are nameable, which is cool, and easy to access using the remote or front panel. In fact, the remote control is set up to make accessing presets even more straightforward than accessing channels by number — just hit the preset number (1-20) and press "Enter". If you want to access a stream using its stream number rather than its preset number, you have to press "Direct" first, then the stream number, then "Enter" (or just wait; it'll switch to the new stream automatically in a few seconds). It didn't seem exactly intuitive at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, in most cases you'll be switching to one of your favorite channels. And chances are, that stream will be in your presets.

The DT-7000S incorporates a lot of features that portable plug-and-play tuners have made popular. My favorite is probably Song Seek. You can store info for up to 24 songs in the Kenwood's internal memory. When Song Seek is activated, the tuner will actually alert you and give you a 10-second visual countdown if one of your saved songs starts playing on another stream! Just press "Enter" before the 10 seconds is up, and you're automatically switched to the new stream. Pretty sweet! While this obviously doesn't work that well if you're not sitting in view of the tuner, it's definitely a neat "extra." Not only do you get to hear your favorite songs more often, you find out which channels are most likely to play the tunes you like. It's a great way to get introduced to channels you may not have tried before — especially since the sheer number of options can sometimes get a little overwhelming.

The remote control gives you basically the same options as the front-panel controls, but adds a few exclusive features. It lets you scan automatically through all channels, allows you to adjust the brightness of the LCD, and gives you the ability to add spaces in preset bank names (so you can go with "ERIN B" instead of "ERINB").

Sound quality
In my living room, I listen on NHT's excellent-for-the-money 2.5i floor-standing speakers. I was anxious to check out the sound of SIRIUS on these speakers, with some solid power behind them, as opposed to the 6.5" drivers in my Honda. I scrolled over to stream 17, "Jam On," and immediately cranked it up when I saw Robert Randolph's name scrolling across the display.

Keep in mind, satellite radio audio is compressed. So admittedly, SIRIUS didn't sound as great as CD does on my system. As I moved from stream to stream, sound quality varied somewhat. But overall, I was pleased. I was always able to get more than enough volume without "ear fatigue," and I even spent some time with the volume pegged enough to hear it outside while doing yard work. The neighbors probably weren't thrilled, but that reggae stream sure does make weeding flowerbeds go faster. And, as I reminded myself, the real benefit of satellite radio isn't the sound quality, it's the crystal-clear reception and incredible variety of programming.

Is it perfect?
Unfortunately, nothing's perfect. The DT-7000S comes close, but I do have one small complaint. One of the coolest things about SIRIUS is being able to preview what's playing on other channels before switching over (if you have digital cable or satellite TV, you know what a truly useful feature this is). But when you preview channels on the DT-7000S, the LCD switches into its 5-line display mode. Text this small was pretty near impossible for me to read from more than 5 or 6 feet away, and I definitely couldn't read it from my usual vegging-out position on the couch.

Making a commitment
I could go on for a while about how much I love SIRIUS, and how enthused I am about the DT-7000S. Instead, I'll just tell you this: I was scheduled to keep the tuner at home for a week. Nearly a month later, it's still sitting on my component rack, pumping out the tunes (don't tell the boss). Now that I've experienced the joy of satellite radio in my living room, I don't think I'll be able to give it up!

Is the DT-7000S right for everyone? Well, the cosmetics probably fall into the "love 'em or hate 'em" category, and if you don't love 'em, you may have a hard time putting the DT-7000S on display with your system. And, price may be a consideration: The DT-7000S retails at around $300, not including an antenna. If you don't mind the impermanence of a portable plug-and-play tuner, there are now a myriad of options available for less than $150. But if, like me, you've been waiting with bated breath for a component-style satellite radio tuner, the DT-7000S is a great bet.


Erin Blanton writes about A/V for Crutchfield.