Pioneer VSX-C300-S manual An Introduction to RDS, Using the RDS display

Using the Tuner

An Introduction to RDS

Radio Data System, or RDS as it’s usually known, is a system used by FM radio stations to provide listeners with various 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 “Program 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
AFFAIRS	Current affairs
INFO	General information
SPORT
EDUCATE	Educational material
DRAMA	Radio plays or serials
CULTURE	National or regional culture, theatre, etc.
SCIENCE	Science and technology
VARIED	Usually talk-based material, such as quiz
	shows or interviews.
POP M	Pop music
ROCK M	Rock music
M.O.R. 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
FINANCE	Stock market reports, commerce,
	trading, etc.
CHILDREN
SOCIAL A	Social affairs
RELIGION
PHONE IN	Public expressing their views by phone
TRAVEL	Holiday-type travel rather than traffic
	announcements

LEISURE	Leisure interests and hobbies
JAZZ
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

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

Using the RDS display

To display the different types of RDS information available (RT, PS and PTY as explained on the previous page), press TUNER on the remote control and use the DISPLAY button to cycle through the types of RDS information.

Each press changes the display as follows:

RT PS PTY

Frequency

MEMO:

•In the RT mode, if any noise is picked up while displaying the RT scroll, some characters may be displayed incorrectly temporarily.

•In the RT, when no RT data is transmitted from the broadcast station, “NO TEXT DATA” is displayed once and after that the PS data is displayed. If you have entered a name for that station it will be displayed.

•In the PTY mode, there are cases where “NO TYPE” is displayed. In this case the tuner will automatically switch to the PS mode after a few seconds.

•If reception conditions are strong but the RDS data is displayed incorrectly, press RF ATT.

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