Filter
Top Products
Listening to the radio
05
37
En
English
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 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.
This system 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 broad-
caster 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.
This unit 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 Easy listening 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 lan-
guage other than English
OLDIES Popular music from the ’50s
FOLK M
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.