History
XMTuner is a Windows application designed to replace the no-longer maintained uSirius and uXM applications that were written by Millard software. It was born when SiriusXM upgraded their internet radio player and broke the applications for good, as an avid XM Radio fan, and an owner of a set-top media player which was no longer as useful, my friend and I set out to write a replacement that would match as closely as possible the functionality of uXM, as well as to extend it with useful additional features. In the last few months, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Starting out with a simple featureless but functional application, and improving and adding to it bit-by-bit in each new version.
What is XMTuner?
Simply put, XMTuner allows you to access the Sirius/XM Satelite Radio streams (both XM Radio Online and Sirius Internet Radio) on your UPnP media player. XMTuner serves as a proxy or interpreter between the SiriusXM web radio pages, making the streams much more accessible.
XMTuner supports a variety of devices, such as the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii consoles, the D-Link DSM-320 and similar set-top players, the Sanegan WFT-1 Internet Radio tuner, as well as a variety of smartphones such as the blackberry, palm, android, and iphone (some devices need TVersity or Orb as well).
Features of XM Tuner that go beyond the original uSirius / uXM applications:
- Windows Service
The uSirius/uXM applications required being logged in all the time, which if you only needed them as a background application, they got in the way. XMTuner supports running as a “service” meaning in background, without a user having to be logged on at all.
- Now Playing page
Especially useful when running as a service, but available in either mode, this simple web page lets you see whats playing on all the Sirius|XM channels as well as keeping up with the currently playing channel and letting you see what recently played. Designed to complement your player as it plays your favorite channel, without you having to keep an eye on it so you don’t miss anything.
- Program Guide
XMTuner supports and integrates the XM Radio program guide making it quick and easy to see what program’s on now. The current and next program appear on the now playing page and integrated player.
- Player
Building on the roots of uXM, the popular Yahoo Widget for XM, XMTuner features a built-in player, making it just as useful on your desktop as on your media player. The player features currently playing song information, along with the current program, and also integrates XMTuner’s history capabilities. A handy notification box appears on song changes so you can minimize XMTuner out of your way while you’re working and not miss out on anything. XMTuner also supports Windows Media Player's visualizations (it shows the last one used in WMP, and Audio Enhancement plugins such as DFX, to improve the stream quality.)
XMTuner also supports most of the uXM/uSirius featureset:
- RSS (Podcast) feeds for the channel lineup
- Playlists
- Transcoding SiriusXM’s WMA streams to mp3 (when tversity is installed and configured) for supporting devices that don’t handle Windows Media.
Future
XMTuner is currently beta quality software, and adopts it versioning system from open source projects, by using a major version of 0, and a minor version for each major milestone in its development, on its way to 1.0. XMTuner is quite stable and we strive to do our best to take feedback and problem reports seriously and fix them in the next milestone. I try to answer all e-mail I receive as quickly as possible, though problem solving can take time. Suggestions and feedback are most definitely welcome and encouraged.
