I've talked to a couple of people recently that are looking for head units with RDS. So far I've only seen a few of the Kenwood Exceleon series that offer this feature. Anyone know off the top of their heads what other brands have HUs with this feature? It seems like a pretty cool concept if your local radio station supports it, so I[m wondering why it's not more common...

 

I was just commin on to ask the same thing was wondering if anyone knew any other makers out there who support the RDS, not really a fan of kenwood so hope there are others.

 

Yep, it is a very cool feature.

But it's not common enough yet. I think I heard that ALL radio stations have to do it by such and such date, but I'm not sure when.

Here in Calgary, only two stations use it to it's full power, by broadcasting the song name being played. 95.9 and 96.9. A new song will start, and 15-30 seconds later the title & artist appears. The title remains until the next song, even if there are commercials or news or whatever, the last song played will keep going by.

107.3 and 92.1 just broadcast a catch line, like "CALGARY'S CLASSIC ROCK STATION", constantly. It never changes.

98.5 just broadcasts their station name, VIBE 985. Many others don't support the feature at all, my HU just reports "WAITING..." for two minutes and then gives up.

My HU manual shows that the stations can broadcast Traffic Information (TI) as well. You can even set it so that if you're listening to a cd and some major traffic jam happens, it'll come through even though you're not listening to the radio at the time. As far as I know, no Canadian stations support this feature yet, or at least nothing in Alberta.

 

it something widely used un europe were just a little slow over here