Pioneer VSX-C550 Stereo Receiver User Manual


 
English
39
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 News
AFFAIRS Current affairs
INFO General information
SPORT 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 also called
soft rock
LIGHT M ‘Light’ classical music
CLASSICS ‘Serious’ classical music
OTHER M Other music not fitting any of the above
categories
WEATHER Weather
FINANCE Stock market reports, commerce,
trading, etc.
CHILDREN Programs for children
SOCIAL A Social affairs
RELIGION Programs concerning religion
PHONE IN Public expressing their views by phone
TRAVEL Holiday-type travel rather than traffic
announcements
LEISURE Leisure interests and hobbies
JAZZ Jazz
COUNTRY Country music
NATION M Popular music in a language other than
English
OLDIES Popular music from the ’50s and ’60s
FOLK M Folk music
DOCUMENT Documentaries
In addition, there are two other program types, ALARM,
and NO TYPE. ALARM used for exceptional emergency
announcements. You can’t search for this, but the tuner
will switch automatically to this RDS broadcast signal.
NO TYPE appears when a type cannot be found.
Using the RDS display
To display the different types of RDS information
available (RT, PS and PTY as explained above), press FM/
AM on the remote control and use the DISPLAY button
to cycle through the types of RDS information.
Each press changes the display as follows:
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 RADIO TEXT DATA is dis-
played 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 DATA 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