Do any features of Car "Radio Data System" work in NZ?

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Do any features of Car "Radio Data System" work in NZ?

geek4me

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#123265 1-Jul-2013 18:05

I have a car radio that has RDS or Radio Data System to receive Traffic Information via the FM radio.

The features shown which can be turned on or off are:

TA - Traffic Announcement from a TP Traffic Program FM station
AF - Alternative Frequency to switch to nearest station with the same broadcast
REG - Regional Setting to hear the same program continuously (that's all the manual says)
Radio Text - displays album, track, artist and genre of song being broadcast

Are these features supported on any radio stations anywhere in New Zealand? Specifically in the Wellington Region.

If these are not supported does turning them off save the battery.

The radio does not have a GPS or internet connectivity, only FM Radio Data System.

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#847838 1-Jul-2013 18:12

Radio text I have seen

Klipspringer

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#847841 1-Jul-2013 18:15

Its only a few of the stations, and in a few of the main cities.

The following Radio Stations in New Zealand use the RDS technology.

In Wellington I have seen it on the Edge and ZM.

But I live up the Kapiti Coast. And both ZM and The Edge are broadcast on different frequencies here to Wellington and the Hutt. So when driving into Wellington I need to change channels (Something which RDS-AF is suppose to take care of).

Not sure why any of the other stations are not taking advantage of the technology. Maybe its more costly for the radio stations?

geek4me

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#847846 1-Jul-2013 18:38

Cool. I wonder if the duplicate stations in Wellington, like The Breeze , The Edge and Concert switch between frequencies between the City and The Hutt Valley - if they use RDS I'm guessing they will as they are "close together". Guess I'll find out the next time I head into the city. Look forward to getting the traffic announcements too assuming that RDS stations support all RDS features.

grant_k

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#847847 1-Jul-2013 18:43

geek4me: ...
Look forward to getting the traffic announcements too assuming that RDS stations support all RDS features.

Unless you are a ZM listener, you are pretty much out of luck. Surprising to see that very few other stations support TA or TP.

Goosey

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#847854 1-Jul-2013 18:46

That RDS list link is somewhat missing some info. You will find RDS is somtimes inactive on a lot of those stations which use RDS. Quite often you will note the radio station wont provide you with full song/artist info and instead just show you their station name and / or freq. I havent yet been able to have RDS switch me to an alternate freq automatically, I dont think this service is used in NZ and hence the RDS info usually shows the stations alternate frequencies on occasion.

Behodar

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#847855 1-Jul-2013 18:48

Klipspringer: But I live up the Kapiti Coast. And both ZM and The Edge are broadcast on different frequencies here to Wellington and the Hutt. So when driving into Wellington I need to change channels (Something which RDS-AF is suppose to take care of).

AF does work (if you have a compatible receiver); we took a company car up to Auckland and it happily changed frequency without any intervention (I think it was on ZM).

Klipspringer

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#847857 1-Jul-2013 19:07

Behodar:
Klipspringer: But I live up the Kapiti Coast. And both ZM and The Edge are broadcast on different frequencies here to Wellington and the Hutt. So when driving into Wellington I need to change channels (Something which RDS-AF is suppose to take care of).

AF does work (if you have a compatible receiver); we took a company car up to Auckland and it happily changed frequency without any intervention (I think it was on ZM).

The problem with ZM is that there is no RDS on 91.1 (The Kapiti frequency, it does not even display Text)
Therefore it never switches to the Kapiti frequency when driving from Wellington.

It does seem to switch fine between some of the other regions. The Hutt for example.

This was a little while ago so it may have changed since. But I did try it for both The Edge and ZM. None of them switched to the Wellington frequencies.

Android with the TuneIn App is probably the best solution for RDS anyway. Works well enough for me.

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Peppery

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#847863 1-Jul-2013 19:29

I recall reading that ZM are abusing the RDS spec by changing the display name of the station to the song rather than the lesser used radio text function (which is why song names are broken up into 8 characters at a time, radio text is a 64 character field). Certainly is annoying with radios that cache the RDS name for presets.

geek4me

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#847870 1-Jul-2013 19:49

Is there a high set up cost, or ongoing cost, for stations to use the technology that is stopping them from using RDS? If it is not high perhaps more people should contact their favorite stations to ask them why they're not getting on board. Stations like to have more listeners so RDS support may help people make the switch. Perhaps more radio stations will support the technology when RDS radios become more common.

andrewcnz

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#847880 1-Jul-2013 20:09

Most of the FM stations in Christchurch have static station names. A few have scrolling station information. Very few have active song now playing(ZM and The Attic have song names).

gareth41

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#847881 1-Jul-2013 20:15

geek4me: Is there a high set up cost, or ongoing cost, for stations to use the technology that is stopping them from using RDS? If it is not high perhaps more people should contact their favorite stations to ask them why they're not getting on board. Stations like to have more listeners so RDS support may help people make the switch. Perhaps more radio stations will support the technology when RDS radios become more common.

No high setup costs involved for RDS, theres plenty of kits around which can be used to feed RDS into a professional transmitter, providing there is no other filtering/pre-emph going on before the xmitters input. It can also be done with software and an HD soundcard, RDS is nothing special its simply part of the audio spectrum fed into a transmitters mpx input. There's software out there that can even generate an entire stereo multiplex with pre-emph, Stereo Tool is one such program.

Peppery

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#847882 1-Jul-2013 20:18

geek4me: Is there a high set up cost, or ongoing cost, for stations to use the technology that is stopping them from using RDS? If it is not high perhaps more people should contact their favorite stations to ask them why they're not getting on board. Stations like to have more listeners so RDS support may help people make the switch. Perhaps more radio stations will support the technology when RDS radios become more common.

RDS is fairly mature now and is in quite a few cars & home receivers. My car's factory radio from 2006 supports it (admittedly, it's Euro, I'd imagine Japanese are a bit different?).

kiwirock

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#847884 1-Jul-2013 20:23

Haha, I remember when they started fiddling with RDS up north when they used to leave the TA flag on to make RDS receivers jump to their station just because they could. Eventually it made TV news and so the fun of RDS went away with it.

As mentioned already, it's not really an expensive system to implement, but does require some mucking around and to pay someone to get it all setup and the information up to transmitters/over some older well filtered STL's.

That money is better spent elsewhere, more so now that receivership is the outcome for some :o)

gareth41

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#847896 1-Jul-2013 20:38

kiwirock: Haha, I remember when they started fiddling with RDS up north when they used to leave the TA flag on to make RDS receivers jump to their station just because they could. Eventually it made TV news and so the fun of RDS went away with it.

That's what UK pirates were doing last I heard, pirate radio in London is a big thing apparently with most of the FM band full of them.

kiwirock

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#847903 1-Jul-2013 20:47

Down here (Invercargill) Radioworks only replaced dieing Wizard for Windows machines some running Windows for Workgroups a year or two back tops. I was there to help take away some old gear while Craig was doing a refresh on the place. RDS is way to fancy for some markets is all I can say.

In some places it's just not worth the time to get it setup, assuming the automation system has been setup for it from the years ago when the majority of it was dubbed in, and the STL (studio to transmitter) link systems can pass it (it's still common on some sites to use two mono STL's to carry stereo baseband rather than single composite with RDS so RDS can't get across it up to a processor on top of a hill). It's still possible to insert it with a static station name and encoder in to the audio processor.

For gareth41, almost all audio pre-emphasis and filtering is done on the FM audio processor now. RDS is inserted in to these at the locations that have it. Since most networked brands have programme provided from a local breakfast show, the rest remote, RDS is cumbersome to implement everywhere.

The refresh down here saw the audio processing all done at the studio now but I don't think they bothered with RDS while they were hear. If they did, it'll only be a static station name entry. The station's sound and income is more important than RDS toys. It also robs that little bit extra of spectrum/deviation away from being the loudest on the dial :o)

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