Alpine Electronics is now shipping the industry’s first car radio to be bundled with a satellite radio tuner.
And the tuner is the new XM model SXV100 that can add TiVo-like recording to the car radio.
So you get the Alpine CDE-124SXM radio plus the XM tuner for a package price of $229.95 (MAP). When purchased alone, the tuner sells for $70.
When you use the new XM tuner with the Alpine radios, you get a 30 minute buffer to store programming. You can pause, rewind and replay through all the stored programming. You also get iTunes Tagging and other features.
Alpine is also shipping another radio, model CDE-123 that can work with the new XM tuner, but does not come bundled with it. The CDE-123 carries a $199.95 price tag.
The CDE-124SXM has 18 watts RMS by 4 power, front USB port and an aux input so you can connect an iPod or other portable. The CDE-123 adds front and rear USB ports and comes with a cable for an iPod or iPhone. It’s also Bluetooth ready. Both models have a build in equalizer.
The products were first shown in January at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Clarification: We are using the term bundled here literally, as a bundle of two boxes. As our very astute readers point out, Alpine offered a CD radio with a built-in tuner years ago. It was the model Alpine 9820XM.
Source: Alpine Electronics
Agreed, Alpine first did this back in Dec. of 2003, and I believe it was shipped as a 2004 model, the CDA-9820XM , it had a built-in XM tuner, but you had to buy the XM antenna separately.
This is not new, as it was introduced 7 years ago.
Actually this is the second time Alpine has done this. The first was about 4-5 years ago. It was basically a CDE-9802 with the XM receiver built in rather being an external piece as it is now.