Well we knew it was coming and now it’s here – two days ahead of schedule!

If you’re a Dish Network customer and you subscribe to AT120 or more, you now have access to all of Sirius Satellite Radio‘s commercial-free music stations right there on your TV at no extra charge. You’ll find the channels in the 6000 range. The best part about this arrangement is that these stations are streamed to Dish Network at 200kbps, much more than the 60kbps used in Sirius’ own radios!

I’m listening now and it sounds fantastic. There are SIXTY Sirius music channels on Dish and they all sound great.

The old lower-quality music stations that sit in the 900 channel range are still there – all 32 of them. I’m not sure if Dish is planning on keeping them around or not. It wouldn’t make much sense to do so… Those old streams are provided by Muzak, by the way, a company who is mostly responsible for the background music you hear in office buildings or when you go shopping in retail chain stores (hence the lower audio quality).

If you’re one of those die hards with a FTA (free to air) receiver, you can listen to these streams free too! Just point your dish to Echostar 7 at 119° and tune in! They’re unencrypted. Can you believe that?