I just installed the tuner module on my Mk2 and everything seems to work fine. I have never had a stereo with RDS before so I was curious to see what it was like...

The first time I tried the tuner, I got a flashing "RDS" text indicator on a couple stations. After a little while, one of them had the call letters of the station magically appear. Since then however, I have NEVER seen the RDS indicator ever appear again!

What's the deal? Is RDS really that seldom used? How many percent of stations in the U.S. make use of RDS? And on the stations that it is available, does your signal strength have to be very strong for it to work reliably? Since I live halfway between two major cities, most of the radio stations here don't have the strongest signal strength (though they are quite listenable).

Or is there something wrong with my new tuner module? Why would the RDS indicator flash on a bunch of stations the first time I tried it, then ever day after that it never flashes on any station for even a second.

RDS in the US is really almost a lost cause.

Yes, the signal must be pretty good (in my experience). I've got one station locally that does RDS for it's call letters and a clock. The other station is located about 80 miles away, which does the call letters, clock and uses the messaging to send ads. Joy.

I have yet to hear of any of the cool features of RDS every being implemented in the US. Traffic announcements, autotuning... It'll probably be a cold day in hell before that happens here.

Travelling around the south east, I've found about 5 stations that do anything with RDS and 3/5 of them are clock and call sign only... Typically with the clock set wrong.

I've seen it come and go randomly. Honestly, I don't think that most of the stations even know what it is. Lord knows that if they did they would use it for advertising.

As to why it would show up once, but never again.... What is your typical signal strength? I don't recall ever seeing RDS on less than 1 bar from full strength.

After doing some searching awhile back on RDS, the US is pushing a slightly different version instead of RDS it's called RBDS. RDS is the European version.
One of the purposes was for the Emergency Alert System use thereby the reason for a different system in the US, you can read more about it here.

Here's a list of some radio stations that have it, may not be up to date.

Of the couple stations I saw RDS here one was CBC in Vancouver, Canada. The signal strength was around 3 bars. The other station was the NPR station in Seattle which was at about 1 to 2 bars and very weak. Only the CBC statoin retreived any information (the call letters). The other stations just flashed RDS on and off and showed no information.

It's interesting to note that both CBC and NPR are donation/governement sponsered stations with no advertisements.

Thanks for the info. I guess my tuner module is working just fine!

I looked at that list of RDS stations on Crutchfield's web site: Two of those stations are right in my town. I always get all bars lit up when I'm on those stations, yet RDS never apperas. How could that be?

Are these stations using this RBDS you mention? Is RBDS incompatible with the RDS used in the empeg tuner module?

You Americans just have to do everything differently don't you!

RBDS should be compatible (at least in a decoding sense). There may be some packet types that we ignore for RBDS, but as noone in the US appears to use it properly anyway...

Hugo

RDS is in there for European owners (and certain BBC influenced former colonies) - in all practical terms the US uptake is near zero.

Rob

What I have noticed is the only stations in the US that REALLY use RDS is NPR Stations. In Boston, WGBH Classical uses the RDS layer to send out the type of music, the call letters, and every now and then what is playing. Beyond that, there is very little acceptance even if a channel is broadcasting RDS. I need to check with our SmartTraveler service and see if they broadcast RDS. If not, the next step is to convince them to do so with another radio station's signal.

Greg

I am in the metro New York area and to my surprise, there are nearly no RDS stations. Only 102.7 WNEW and a crappy westchester station display the call letters. Oddly, 92.3 WXRK doesn't use RDS, but I frequently get a clock (wrong) after listening to the station for a few minutes.

In San Francisco, there's a lot of stations that use RDS... Maybe 4 or 5. It's not that big a deal though... One of them sends a tagline and one of them sends an incorrect clock. Big deal.

- Jon

Out of curiosity, which ones have you found in SF? I went through the whole dial and only found one which only displays an incorrect clock.

-Mike

the only one i found here in SF was KOIT. *blech*

Are these stations using this RBDS you mention?
Unfortunately I can't answer that the article I linked to in post was a bit dated (1998?), beyond what I mentioned in last post, I really can't say. Personally there is only one station in my area that uses it, unfortunately I can't stand the music format they are. I really don't miss the fact that I'm not using it, since I can name all the presets (call letters) and now have a clock thanks to v2.03b, which is the only thing I used the RDS for before v2.03b came out.

We have one here in Lubbock, TX and they display the wrong clock too.

What is it with the wrong clocks?

Here in Raleigh, NC, the only station that seems to use RDS is WKNC, the local college (NCSU) station. Even the NPR station, WUNC, which is also run by a college (UNC Chapel Hill), doesn't have it.

What is it with the wrong clocks?

So many reports of wrong RDS clocks. Makes me wonder if it isn't a bug in the player software?

Anyone have a non-empeg radio with RDS to check as a baseline?

WKNC's clock is correct. Of course, it might really be off as much as the empeg is, in the opposite direction. Seems unlikely, though, doesn't it?

I always get correct time from the BBC stations around here (Cambridge UK). Including a few months ago during BST, so I think the timezone offset is working. But my other RDS radios (house and previous car deck) don't do the clock channel, so I can't confirm those.

I don't believe there's a bug - the time is almost always correct with UK stations.

In the US I suspect that most station techs have forgotten that they even have an RDS box.

Rob

I can confirm this. Philly has at least 5 RDS stations and those with clocks are perpetually between 3 and 30 minutes apart. I wish there was a way to disable the RDS clock.

So many reports of wrong RDS clocks. Makes me wonder if it isn't a bug in the player software?

Anyone have a non-empeg radio with RDS to check as a baseline?


I had one on one of my older headunits. It was wrong on the same stations. I do beleive it's a bug, but not in the empeg. It's on the Radio stations part. Just recently I had the pleasure of seeing exactly HOW responsive they were.... Daylight Savings. One station changed it within 2 days, one took about a week, and one still isn't fixed (as of last weekend when I was in the area).

I'd love to set my clock via RDS, but only with a NTP style error-detection (Opps, this clock is off of ours by over x number of minutes, set it manually if you want to override, then I'll sync up.)

Came across this list on the web and thought it may be helpful:

http://members.aol.com/jpzondlo/nardslog.html

This is every station broadcasting an RDS signal in NA listed by frequency.

Greg