D3 radio RDS "virus"

[af3556]

The radio in my 2008 Disco 3 HSE, I believe the "premium" Alpine unit (same as the attached pic) has a peculiar problem. I have stations programmed in to each of the 9 memories, and some of these stations broadcast RDS information - usually only the station identifier. i.e. when I press '3', i98FM in Wollongong comes on accompanied by 'i98FM' on the radio's display.

Now the thing is, when I switch to another station that doesn't transmit RDS, the "i98FM" text gets copied across to the other memory channel - the (incorrect) station ID returning even after manually tuning to another frequency and thence back to a memorised station.

Worse, after a few changes back and forth, the radio seems to get more confused and actually tunes to i98FM when I've pressed some other memory button. Eventually every memory channel ends up as i98FM. It's been this way since I've owned it (late 2011).

I've done a bit of searching with no results so I assume this is a rare flakiness with my specific radio, or perhaps it's specific to i98FM's RDS stream and no D3 owners listen to 'em. But on the offchance you've seen this - (how!) did you fix it?

I've found a workaround is to not ever tune in to the problematic station, but my wife always questions why I can't stand having i98FM on the car radio :-)



Rgds,
Ben

[Epic pooh]

Hi Ben ... Mine (same head unit) does exactly the same with i98 (greetings from the gong also). My solution has been to delete i98 since I don't like that station anyway. Not much help, but at least you know you're not alone with this oddity. Cheers, mick.

[time2]

I had the same thing with my 2009 RRS with 97.3FM in Brisbane. It was always "intermittent" in that it never happened at the dealers when I tried to show them.

I did the same thing and just deleted it from the radio memory.

[af3556]

Thanks Mick and time2 for confirming "it's not me" - and indeed, no great loss to delete it.

aside: I bet LR/Alpine aren't the only poorly programmed receivers. I wonder if a radio station could exploit this. Send dodgy data over the RDS stream to reprogram effected radios with all memory channels set to the malicious radio station. "i98FM owns the airwaves..." well, LR owners anyhow. Crap, that'd be a nightmare :-)