I see this mentioned a lot here and on other forums. What's the big deal? All it does is tell you the station name you're listening to assuming the station broadcasts that info to begin with? Or am I missing something here?

Some stations provide traffic, news, stock updates, even ads :~(, etc. in addition to the station name, the song title and artist. We don't have many RDS enabled stations in my city, but I've traveled to some markets that carry much more RDS information. That being said, it sure seems like BMW could have used more wdith across the bottom of the i-drive screen (at least on non-nav cars) to display the information. It appears to only be 8-10 characters wide.

Matt

It also switches frequencys automatically to better frequencys of the same radio station.
In Germany also the most stations have "floating" text. So there are different infos beeing displayed...

I'd say all in all it is rather important.

For me it is more important than MP3...

Never mind Iceman, if there would be an option for an illuminated, heated exteriour coathanger he'd want it.


:o
o:) o:)

:lol: Of course! :whistle:

But seriously, I listen to the radio every day and don't have MP3's, so that's why to me the RDS is more important... ;)

Lomag took the words right out of my mouth. I've been scratching my head trying to find out why everyone seems so obsessed with whether or not RDS is fixed in version 13.x. I've used RDS on other cars and I find that I'm not sitting around wondering how I ever got along without it for so many years.

I usually listen to one or two stations and I know how to find them without using RDS. When I'm travelling, I use All Stations if I'm on FM and I use Autostore on AM. Again, no real need for text descriptions, etc.

If I had to, I'd rank MP3 higher on the list of priorities but in my opinion, Sirius radio (with nav) would rank higher than fixing MP3's or RDS! Until then, it'll be "old fashioned" radio and CD's for me...

Here in Germany my daughter likes BIGFM. In Stuttgart it is on something like 89.5 FM. About halfway to Munich it fads out. In Munich BIGFM is on like 100.9 FM. If you know that yes you can use all stations and switch to the new frequency. But if you have RDS you just tune to BIGFM and the radio automatically switches for you. No need to know the frequency or fiddle with the radio it just uses the best signal. Just select BIGFM and drive. Of course all the German Top 40 stuff really gets on my nerves long before Munich :wacko: so maybe RDS isn't a good thing!

That is a good reason to use RDS. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way over here. Over here, most stations don't even use it. The ones that do will put the FCC call signs up (each station has it's own) or they might put something like "ADLT ROCK" to show what type of music they play. Finally, very few stations will scroll the artist and title of the song being played. If everyone did that, I'd have a different opinion on RDS in the USA!