What the heck is RDS?

This past weekend I was driving with a friend of mine — a fairly tech-savvy individual, actually — when he realized the names of the songs we were listening to on the radio were dancing across my (basic) car stereo LCD display. “I didn’t know you had a satellite radio in your car?” he asked, curiously. “I don’t” was my reply, “It’s just RDS.” Blank look. “Um, R – D – what?” he asked.

This past weekend I was driving with a friend of mine — a fairly tech-savvy individual, actually — when he realized the names of the songs we were listening to on the radio were dancing across my (basic) car stereo LCD display. "I didn’t know you had a satellite radio in your car?" he asked, curiously. "I don’t" was my reply, "It’s just RDS." Blank look. "Um, R – D – what?" he asked.

Radio Data System, or RDS, allows for small amounts of digital information to be transmitted wirelessly by FM radio stations, which shows up as text on the car stereo display.

Common info includes the name of the radio station, artist and track name, as well as weather, phone number, time, DJ name, and more. Not all stations offer RDS info, but their respective websites usually indicate if they do.

Therefore, a car stereo with RDS might show something like “Timbaland…The Way I Are…Mix 99.9…” Hey, it beats waiting to hear if the disc jockey is going to say the name of the tune.

The technology isn’t new — in fact, it’s been around since the early ’90s in Europe and Latin America – but is only starting to become a standard feature built into North American car stereos (even entry-level ones). Some factory decks in new cars, trucks and mini-vans have integrated RDS, too.

A list of popular RDS stations in Canada and the U.S. can be found here.

Filed Under: Portable Devices