FM 104 breaking the law!!!

[Guest]

Some times late a night or even during the day i seen the rds change for a split second changing to: PHONE and then back to: FM104. whats the story with this anyone know???

[Hack]

Godammit!!! Away with their licence now!!!!:eek:

[David C]

Yes,
I thought I saw that before at the corner of my eye...
Decided not to post it as I only (half) saw it the once, presumed I was imagining things...
I think it only came up for a one second cycle anyway.
Could be some sort of remote command?

[Guest]

Ah! The RDS thing!

That's something I posted about almost 12 months ago. It also switches to the letter "S" every so often - for a split second..

FM104 introduced their current RDS lettering about four years ago and this has been occuring since then. Presumably, the "S" comes from the "Superstars of the 80's and 98's" that used to scroll until the ODTR told them they would lose their licence unless they stopped scrolling (after numerous letters, warnings etc)

I can only put the fact the "S" still pops up every often down to the imcompetence of the engineering team at the time.

Maybe their current engineer will sort it out??

[Guest]

Dont u ppl have anything better to do, like LISTEN to the radio!

[Nom de Plume]

What's the situation regarding RDS and FM104 breaking the law? What are they doing wrong? If scrolling is illegal, that's pathetic.

[Guest]

TODAY i seen the rds change from FM104 To FM1 ? it was on my car radio in dublin and there was a perfect signal???

Back to the PHONE - FM104 thing does anyone know why they are doing this??? obviously they want people to phone, but it usualy happens when they are running a competition or on the phoneshow, so it seems very deliberate ???

[Megawatts]

Its possible overdeviatuion is corrupting the RDS data stream. Also:- Multipath around Dublin would do the same thing.

RDS has a profusion of features, but thanks to the strangulatory people almost all of them are not allowed, unless you have an RDS radio that shows Radio text, but few people sue that, unless you are BBC Radio, who have a team of people making it really work.

Its the same reason Itreland has no DAB, and has almost completely wasted its access to satellite TV/ radio, until recently. Its called staying in, and making sure you live in a dark Age.

Alas thats why we have the Pirates.

[Guest]

" Corrupted RDS ..."

This is only a problem when stations use so called "Moving RDS" like you do (or at least did).

"Its the same reason Itreland has no DAB,"..... "Its called staying in, and making sure you live in a dark Age. "

Miles, I thought you were opposed to DAB?? (from previous postings)

[David C]

It is possible for a static RDS name to become corrupt. The RDS unit at the TX is constantly sending out the same i.d. but if the signal becomes distorted in some way, the reciever can pick up only part of the i.d. and may briefly display blanks or irrelevant characters here and there before recieving a clearer signal.

It is however more likely, as you said, for corruption to occur when numorous sets of text are being sent, as with a poor signal, the tuner recieves parts of the various lines and displays a mix of the two (or more) sets together.

Eg: |HAPPY | | XMAS | | FROM | |FREEDOM |
could read |HAPEDOM | briefly when changing from frame 4 to 1.