As you probably know Sirius has a lot of competition in the arena, including Pandora, Last.fm and AOL Music. And although online streaming has been a free perk to paying Sirius XM subscribers, reports indicate that the company plans to begin charging an additional $2.99 a month for the service. This of course will be an upgrade in sound quality.

According to Orbitcast, Grace Wireless was also on display at the Sirius XM exhibit in the Bellagio, among other internet radio based devices. They speculate that it may be an indication of how Sirius XM plan to get satellite radio into the home, rather than a car only service.

Rogue Amoeba Software released a Public Preview version of Pulsar. With Pulsar you can listen to streaming XM and Sirius Internet radio stations. However, after 20 minutes, the signal is degraded significantly, so you have to buy a license for $1. And you have to a subscriber to XM Radio Online, Sirius Internet Radio, or both.

This is mac software, so if you have a PC, you are out of luck. That’s something I don’t like about the software right off of the bat, but if you own a mac, it is free to anyone who owns or purchases its Airfoil for Mac 3, Audio Hijack Pro 2, Fission, Nicecast, or Radioshift products.

When you open the software and login with your account, you will see Pulsar’s interface shows station names, descriptions, and the currently playing songs, artists, and genres. Next to each station is a play button and a heart button. Clicking on a play button begins buffering and then playing a stream (and changes the button to a stop button). Clicking on a heart button turns the heart red and adds the station your favorite.

If anyone has tried out this software, let me know by dropping me a line or leave a comment. This sounds like a pretty good service, since a lot of audio quality on internet radio is pretty lousy.

In a spot check of several stations, I found the audio quality to be comparable to other Internet radio stations. Buffering times varied greatly, even for the same station. And Pulsar was sometimes slow to catch up with displaying the currently-playing song on several occasions (the artist and song listed on the station and in the playback area didn’t always match up with each other, for example). Overall, Pulsar’s clean, iTunes-like interface was much nicer to work with than the respective services’ Web players.

The Pioneer Inno2BK was one. The Inno2Bk is an affordable portable Satellite Radio player that allows you to take satellite radio anywhere, as well as having a built in MP3 player. Everyone seems to like it, from CNet.com who gave it 3.5 stars out of five here, its portability, size, attractive interface and recording capability, but disliking its battery life, storage capacity, inability to pause or skip backward, to

PC Magazine that gave it 4.5 stars out of five and named it an Editor’s Choice.

Mike Kobrin of PC Magazine liked the INN@BK’s looks, saying “it’s sleek, solid, sexy, slim and ultra-stylish”, but disliking that the bass and treble controls don’t work for recorded music and the inflexibility in partitioning the storage space.

Sound & Vision Magazine liked it to, as well as many others (see Amazon’s user reviews.)

You can buy the Pioneer Inno2BK here.

Also only on day left on AudioVox XpressR Holiday Bundle over at SRS. The bundle includes XpressR Receiver, Car Kit, Home Kit and $30 XM Gift Card.

Delphi Roady XT Receiver

Pretty nice deal on a Satellite Radio package. You get a Delphi Roady XT Receiver, Car Kit, Home Kit, Home Speaker Dock, Portable Audio System, & $30 XM Service Gift Card for $99 from My Radio Store.

And here’s some reviews of the Delphi Roady XT Receiver.

A nice by-product of the merger of Sirius and XM, nationwide coverage of the college football bowl games began on December 20th and will through January 8th the Oklahoma Sooners take on #2 Florida Gators in the FedEx BCS National Championship Game in Miami, FL (8pm ET on Sirius channel 120 and XM channel 140).

For all of you college football nuts, Sirius XM personality Chris ‘Mad Dog’ Russo will host his daily show, “Mad Dog Unleashed,” live from Miami on Wednesday, January 7th and Thursday, January 8th on both Sirius channel 123 and XM channel 144.

Sirius owes almost $1 billion in loan repayments due next year, including $209 million in convertible bonds maturing in February. The move, which will mean selling new shares could give Sirius the means to meet these needs.

The latest U.S. recession that has really constrained consumer borrowing and spending. Especially for cars, which Sirius has come to depend on for new subscribers. Mel Karmazin said in August that Sirius XM could weather a decline in auto sales because carmakers were putting radios in a greater proportion of vehicles. This is true, but if the consumer isn’t buying up the cars in the first place, it doesn’t really matter. Sirius also completed laying off 450 workers.

Sirius’ share price was a lofty .12 at close on Friday.