R.D.S radio is something younger readers may know nothing about. All modern car stereos have it – and such ubiquity means it’s no longer a selling point.
They rarely bother even sticking the logo on anymore.
Wind back 20-odd years, though, and things were very different. It was the new ‘wow’ technology. When this writer’s dad got a new Cavalier in 1990, with the magic R.D.S stereo, he spent days’ worth of hours in the car, listening to it, watching the display glow the yellow words ‘Radio1’.
But what was it? A BBC development, that added a digital signal overlay to broadcast frequencies. Stereos with the necessary decoder could thus display text and – better still – automatically switch to traffic news, if a radio station fired out the appropriate code. (Here’s my tenuous RSS link: ‘feed’ from traffic bulletins…)
Forget autostore: these babies would automatically retune to the strongest frequency, as you toured round the country. Travelling salesmen were in raptures at the 1988 Birmingham Motor Show where it was launched. Blimey, they could even select the type of programme they preferred, via a jazzy mood input device.
Philips was one of the first proponents of the system over here. which promised a huge amount. Most came to being, but one didn’t; automatic retuning to Medium- or Long-Wave stations carrying the same broadcast. Perhaps irrelevant, as stations slowly dumped their MW frequencies – but imagine, Blackwall Tunnel users, how cool it would’ve been to hear El Tel, uninterrupted.
Yes, R.D.S was a Mecca for in-car stereo. That’s its entire reason for being. So, who was the fastest maker to bring it out as standard? Why, the maker of the first country to get it…
Sweden received R.D.S two years before the U.K. Meaning Volvo was the first to introduce it onto its models.
Interestingly, the reasoning behind it was safety. Think of the benefits in keeping eyes on the road, rather than at a digital dial fruitlessly looking for Bruno Brooks.
R.D.S was nowhere in 1988. By 1990, it was getting everywhere. It’s a lesson in properly useful benefits, and a coordinated pan-European strategy, bringing clear benefits to us all. Makes you wonder why DAB, which offers yet more gains (says this BBC Radio 6 Music die-hard), is still flitting on the periphery…
Internet of Things joins motorsport
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