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SiriusXM Tuner Gets Album-Art Display

SiriusXM’s Onyx Plus dock-and-player tuner gets album-art display

SiriusXM launched the Onyx Plus dock-and-play radio for use in homes and cars, adding a four-color display unavailable on its predecessor and adding album-art display to a satellite-radio tuner for the first time.

It’s available at Shop.SiriusXM.com and Best Buy stores at a suggested $99, including vehicle-docking kit. The Onyx Plus is currently retailing on the satellite broadcaster’s web site at $79. A home-docking kit is optional.

Album-art display is also coming next year to select aftermarket head units that connect to a planned SXV300 satellite-radio tuner equipped with album-art reception, one supplier said. SiriusXM declined to comment.

Compared with the Onyx EZ, the new Onyx Plus accesses the satellite broadcaster’s expanded-channel lineup and adds such features as TuneStart, TuneMix and TuneScan. TuneStart automatically starts songs from the beginning when a person tunes to a Smart Favorite music channel.

TuneMix lets users create their own music channel by blending a user’s Smart Favorite music channels, while TuneScan scans and selects songs that have already played on a user’s Smart Favorite music channel.

The Onyx Plus also adds the ability to store up to 20 channels for one-touch access, including 18 Smart Favorite channels, compared with EZ’s 10 station presets. The new model also lets users pause, rewind and replay live satellite radio plus go back and replay music, news, talk or sports segments on all Smart Favorite channels.

Also new to the Onyx series is the ability to get alerts of favorite artists, songs and games playing on other channels; get score alerts when scores occur in games involving favorite teams; and view sports scores.

Like the EZ, the Onyx Plus it offers One-Touch Jump to jump back to a previous channel, ability to lock out channels with mature content, and ability to browse other channels while listening to a current channel.

Some of the advanced features also appear in the Lynx docking/portable radio launched in late 2011, such as expanded-channel lineup, TuneStart, Tune Scan, TuneMix. pause, rewind and replay live satellite radio. It lacks album-art display, however.

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