36
En
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:
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.
PS
PTY
Frequency
RT