Hi All,

I've just fitted a new Kenwood KDC-PSW9527 stereo to my car, which is
very good, but I have noticed an odd bit of behaviour.

It is an RDS radio, which therefore displays the name of the station
you are listening to, rather than the frequency. This works perfectly
on every station I can receive except for Q103 (the local commercial
station). When tuned to Q103, the display resolutely shows the
frequency rather than the station name.

The radio is definitely getting RDS information from Q103 - the PTY
and AF services work. According to my home RDS tuner, Q103 is
transmitting a station name - "_Q103_", which was also displayed
correctly on my previous Kenwood car stereo.

On browsing through a list of station name (PS) codes transmitted by
UK RDS stations, I noticed something odd - very few stations use
underscores which are displayed on the screen. There are two
underscore characters used in PS codes, one of which is displayed as a
space, and the other of which is displayed as an underscore - the
"space" character is used by most PS codes, but the "underscore" is
very uncommon.

I suspect that there is a firmware bug in new Kenwood stereos that
means they will fail to display PS names which contain the underscore
character - I can't believe this a fault specific to my particular
stereo.

Has anyone else in the Cambridge area got a recent Kenwood HU - this
year's range have model numbers ending in a "7"? If so, can you get a
name from Q103, or do you just get "103.0" on the display?

Cheers,

Simon

In article , Simon Long
writes
Hi All,

I've just fitted a new Kenwood KDC-PSW9527 stereo to my car, which is
very good, but I have noticed an odd bit of behaviour.

It is an RDS radio, which therefore displays the name of the station
you are listening to, rather than the frequency. This works perfectly
on every station I can receive except for Q103 (the local commercial
station). When tuned to Q103, the display resolutely shows the
frequency rather than the station name.

The radio is definitely getting RDS information from Q103 - the PTY
and AF services work. According to my home RDS tuner, Q103 is
transmitting a station name - "_Q103_", which was also displayed
correctly on my previous Kenwood car stereo.

On browsing through a list of station name (PS) codes transmitted by
UK RDS stations, I noticed something odd - very few stations use
underscores which are displayed on the screen. There are two
underscore characters used in PS codes, one of which is displayed as a
space, and the other of which is displayed as an underscore - the
"space" character is used by most PS codes, but the "underscore" is
very uncommon.

I suspect that there is a firmware bug in new Kenwood stereos that
means they will fail to display PS names which contain the underscore
character - I can't believe this a fault specific to my particular
stereo.

Has anyone else in the Cambridge area got a recent Kenwood HU - this
year's range have model numbers ending in a "7"? If so, can you get a
name from Q103, or do you just get "103.0" on the display?

Cheers,

Simon

FWIW Q103 had some of their transmitting equipment nicked last week
including the RDS encoder!. Apparently this took some time to replace.

I've forwarded your post onto ntl broadcast they might find it of
interest!..

Perhaps something obscure is happening with the new coder....
--
Tony Sayer

(Simon Long) writes:


I've just fitted a new Kenwood KDC-PSW9527 stereo to my car, which is
very good, but I have noticed an odd bit of behaviour...

It's embarrassed to be tuned into Q103 and can't bear to display
the name?

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Simon Long wrote:

Has anyone else in the Cambridge area got a recent Kenwood HU - this
year's range have model numbers ending in a "7"? If so, can you get a
name from Q103, or do you just get "103.0" on the display?

Not being in the market for a dubious re-finance deal, double glazing or
a car, I'm afraid I can't help you.

On 28 Apr 2004 01:50:31 -0700, (Simon
Long) wrote:

When tuned to Q103, the display resolutely shows the
frequency rather than the station name.

Seems to be a problem with Q103. The same thing's happening on Alpine,
Pioneer and Sony units. It's obviously not a total lack of RDS, as
radio text works fine.

Jon
--
In-Car Express http://www.incarexpress.co.uk
Car Audio | Security | Multimedia | Navigation
Tel. 01223 301212 Fax. 0870 7484 123

(Simon Long) wrote in message . com...
Hi All,

I've just fitted a new Kenwood KDC-PSW9527 stereo to my car, which is
very good, but I have noticed an odd bit of behaviour.

It is an RDS radio, which therefore displays the name of the station
you are listening to, rather than the frequency. This works perfectly
on every station I can receive except for Q103 (the local commercial
station). When tuned to Q103, the display resolutely shows the
frequency rather than the station name.

The radio is definitely getting RDS information from Q103 - the PTY
and AF services work. According to my home RDS tuner, Q103 is
transmitting a station name - "_Q103_", which was also displayed
correctly on my previous Kenwood car stereo.

On browsing through a list of station name (PS) codes transmitted by
UK RDS stations, I noticed something odd - very few stations use
underscores which are displayed on the screen. There are two
underscore characters used in PS codes, one of which is displayed as a
space, and the other of which is displayed as an underscore - the
"space" character is used by most PS codes, but the "underscore" is
very uncommon.

I suspect that there is a firmware bug in new Kenwood stereos that
means they will fail to display PS names which contain the underscore
character - I can't believe this a fault specific to my particular
stereo.

Has anyone else in the Cambridge area got a recent Kenwood HU - this
year's range have model numbers ending in a "7"? If so, can you get a
name from Q103, or do you just get "103.0" on the display?

Cheers,

Simon

On my car stereo (not Kenwood) I find that if I manually search out a
station without RDS turned on and then store it, it only ever displays
the radio frequency, even when I subsequently turn RDS on.

Probably clutching at straws though because I assume you searched for
all your radio stations in the same way.

InCar Express wrote in message . ..
On 28 Apr 2004 01:50:31 -0700, (Simon
Long) wrote:

When tuned to Q103, the display resolutely shows the
frequency rather than the station name.

Seems to be a problem with Q103. The same thing's happening on Alpine,
Pioneer and Sony units. It's obviously not a total lack of RDS, as
radio text works fine.

And on Clarion head units.

On 28 Apr 2004 23:50:38 -0700, (Bob) wrote:

InCar Express wrote in message . ..
On 28 Apr 2004 01:50:31 -0700, (Simon
Long) wrote:

When tuned to Q103, the display resolutely shows the
frequency rather than the station name.

Seems to be a problem with Q103. The same thing's happening on Alpine,
Pioneer and Sony units. It's obviously not a total lack of RDS, as
radio text works fine.

And on Clarion head units.

We've investigated a bit more, and all current units seem to be
suffering from the same problem - including high end in-dash AV screen
units. Some older units seem to be OK though, so I'd suspect Simon's
guess is probably along the right lines - that it's the underscore
that's causing the problem. Presumably, as time's passed, the people
implementing RDS have assumed it'll only use a limited alphanumric
character set.

Jon
--
In-Car Express http://www.incarexpress.co.uk
Car Audio | Security | Multimedia | Navigation
Tel. 01223 301212 Fax. 0870 7484 123

InCar Express wrote:

We've investigated a bit more, and all current units seem to be
suffering from the same problem - including high end in-dash AV screen
units. Some older units seem to be OK though, so I'd suspect Simon's
guess is probably along the right lines - that it's the underscore
that's causing the problem. Presumably, as time's passed, the people
implementing RDS have assumed it'll only use a limited alphanumric
character set.

Works fine on my unlabelled "original equipment" Blaupunkt head unit
(which I think is very close to but not exactly the same as the Alicante
CD33) and my JVC home hifi.

I passed the comment about the underscores on to someone at Q103 today
but it might take a while to get to the right person.

Cheers,

Mark.