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</head><body><p><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 153);"><em>The reason RDS names aren't used as a method of tuning is that RDS isn't ubiquitous in the US, and in Europe many stations use animated and dynamic RDS names, which breaks this stuff.</em></span></p><p><br></p><p>I can't see any great force in that as a reason for not using station name tuning by default. The RDS radio market is clearly big enough to support it as an option perfectly economically in the rest of world without needing to work in the US. More to the point, I don't think DAB is exactly ubiquitous in the US either is it? And yet we have a market full of DAB sets!</p><p><br></p><p>Same sort of thing applies to push button tuning on AM - the US uses 10kHz channel spacing and we use 9kHz, so radio circuits/chipsets in portables have to support both. Anyway, a radio that can tune by station list can still be operated by frequency if it finds itself in a non-RDS region, so it can only be a gain or neutral, not negative.</p><p><br></p><p>Animated and dynamic RDS names do not break tuning by name - as I said, my car can tune by station list, and it works perfectly well in continental countries that use more advanced techniques - the station list shows a static shot of the 8 character name which is usually perfectly recognizable. And again, if not, you can fall back to frequency tuning. Tuning by station name doesn't have to be the only mode available, but it should (IMO) be available and the default option for a radio to get the tick mark.<br></p><p><br></p><p>The IP stuff is a further argument, and perfectly fine, but no bearing on my suggestion that for DAB/FM radios sold for the UK market should have been required to offer tuning by station name across FM & DAB. <br></p><p><br></p><p>Alex<br></p><p><br></p><p> <br></p><blockquote type="cite">On 05 September 2015 at 15:59 James Cridland <james@cridland.net> wrote:<br><br><p>The reason RDS names aren't used as a method of tuning is that RDS isn't ubiquitous in the US, and in Europe many stations use animated and dynamic RDS names, which breaks this stuff.</p><p>Neither RDS nor DAB offer handoff to IP, nor direct links to other IP-based resources either, so they're not, by themselves, future-proof.</p><p>RadioDNS provides that mapping, which makes radio receivers significantly more user friendly.</p><p>IP is four times smaller than DAB use here in the UK, and is growing slower as well. (Indeed, growth appears to have stagnated for most.)</p><p>The future is multi-platform, and better sets. Sadly, existing broadcasters aren't entirely on-board.</p><p>James<br></p></blockquote></body></html>