An introduction to RDS European model only

Using the Tuner

An introduction to RDS (European model only)

Radio Data System, or RDS as it’s usually known, is a system used by FM radio stations to provide listeners with var- ious kinds of information—the name of the station and the kind of show they’re broadcasting, for example. This information shows up as text on the display, and you can switch between the kind of information shown. Although you don’t get RDS information from all FM radio stations, you do with most.

Probably the best feature of RDS is that you can search automatically by type of program. So, if you felt like listening to jazz, you could search for a station that’s broadcasting a show with the program type, JAZZ. There are around 30 such program types, including various genres of music, news, sport, talk shows, financial information, and so on.

The receiver lets you display three different kinds of RDS information: Radio Text, Program Service Name, and Pro- gram Type.

Radio Text (RT) is messages sent by the radio station. These can be anything the broadcaster chooses—a talk radio station might give out it telephone number as RT, for example.

Program Service Name (PS) is the name of the radio station.

Program Type (PTY) indicates the kind of program currently being broadcast. The receiver can search for and display the following program types:

NEWS	News
AFFAIRS	Current affairs
INFO	General information
SPORT	Sports
EDUCATE	Educational material
DRAMA	Radio drama
CULTURE	Arts and culture
SCIENCE	Science and technology
VARIED	Usually talk-based material,
	such as quiz shows
	or interviews.
POP M	Pop music
ROCK M	Rock music
EASY M	“Middle of the road” music
LIGHT M	‘Light’ classical music
CLASSICS	‘Serious’ classical music
OTHER M	Other music not fitting any of
	the above categories
WEATHER	Weather reports
FINANCE	Finance and business
CHILDREN	Children’s entertainment
SOCIAL	Social affairs
RELIGION	Religious programming
PHONE IN	Phone-in talk shows
TRAVEL	Travel
LEISURE	Leisure interests and hobbies
JAZZ	Jazz music
COUNTRY	Country music
NATION M	Popular music in a language
	other than English
OLDIES	Popular music from the ’50s
FOLK M	Folk music
DOCUMENT	Documentaries

Using the RDS display

To display the different types of RDS information available, press TUNER button on the remote control and use the DISPMODE button to cycle through the types of RDS information.

Each press changes the display as follows:

Memo:

•If any noise is picked up while displaying the RT scroll, some characters may be displayed incorrectly.

•If you see NO RADIO TEXT DATA in the RT display, it means no RT data is being transmitted from the broad- cast station. If you have entered a name for the station, it is displayed instead of RT data. If you haven’t, the display will automatically switch to the PS data dis- play. If no PS data is transmitted from the station, the frequency will be displayed.

•In the PTY display, there are cases where NO DATA or NO TYPE is shown. If this happens, the PS display is shown after a few seconds.

•This unit converts lower case characters transmitted by broadcast station to upper case characters.

BASIC

In addition, there is a program type called ALARM, used for exceptional emergency announcements. You can’t search for this, but the tuner will switch automatically to this RDS broadcast signal.