The 2023 Forum meeting dates have been cancelled. A new meeting date for 2024 will be announced as soon as possible.

Find us onFacebook LogoTwitter Logo

RDS2 milestones 2014 - 2021

2021-11 The IEC published IEC 62106-10, the UECP fully adapted to all RDS2 functions already standardized in the other parts of the RDS standard IEC 62106. Radio France and Cameon show the RDS Forum a demo put on air in Nantes to compare image transfer with RDS2 and DAB, using the slideshow mode in both cases. For RDS2, Slideshow, a public ODA, is still only experimental and the technical specification to be standardized is still under development within the RDS Forum. The aim is to make it public in 2022.

You can download an mp4 demo video of 2' from here (150 MB)

2021-02 The IEC published IEC 62106-2 ED2 that includes the RDS2 File Transfer protocol RFT used in previous demonstrations since December 2018 by Radio France and Cameon.

2020-01 an RDS Forum working group met in Paris to specify three new public ODA RDS2 applications. These are Station logo, Slideshow with optional image and text elements and Linking the same audio as broadcast over FM using the corresponding IP audio stream.

2019-01 Radio France and Cameon together with Worldcast Systems demonstrated at the European Radio show in Paris the RDS2 transfer of images with music cover art, all synchronized with the music transmitted on the radio programme FIP of Radio France.

2018-12 Radio France and Cameon demonstrated in Nantes the implementation of the File Transfer specification RFT. They used the RDS2 encoder from Worldcast Systems and a newly developed RDS2 demo home receiver from Cameon. They showed the transmission of music cover art and station logo using file sizes of up to 20 KB. The time needed to receive the files was about twice as long compared with DAB, but still very acceptable to achieve an enhancement of the listening experience with FM radio. The next step of this development was to synchronize the cover art with the music items on air.

2018-05 At the RDS Forum meeting held in Glion it was decided that the file transfer protocol as worked out at the TDF workshop needed further improvement, more generic and simplified for implementation. A new working group was created to finalize the work. Mainly thanks to an intensive cooperation between David Jaillet (Cameon for Radio France) and Joop Beunders, the RDS2 File Transfer specification RFT was released in October 2018 (R18/038_1).

2018-04 Worldcast Systems announced at the NAB show at Las Vegas the first commercially available RDS2 encoder to generate an RDS2 test signal and data and its AUDEMAT FM MC5, a multipurpose FM measurement equipment permitting to decode and analyze RDS2.

2016-11 Second RDS2 Info Day held at the Maison de la Radio of Radio France in Paris. A French RDS2 development team composed of RDS experts from Cameon, Magneti Marelli, Radio France and Worldcast Systems presented an RDS setup used to demonstrate on the radio programme FRANCE INTER how images transmitted with RDS2 could be used to enhance the listening experience. They used the same file transmission protocol previously demonstrated in Berlin and concluded that it will need to be enhanced by the RDS Forum to satisfy operational radio requirements. The RDS2 test receivers used were a car radio and a home receiver, jointly developed by Magneti Marelli and Cameon for Radio France.

2015-11 First RDS2 Info Day held in Berlin. The innovations presented there were a first RDS2 encoder prototype developed by the US company Jump2Go and a first RDS2 receiver (a USB stick with RDS/RDS2 monitor decoder with associated data analysis software) RX014 from MacBe, a Dutch company, using a modified RDS NXP chip set developed for RDS2 decoding by Hendrik van der Ploeg from the Dutch company Catena, now NXP. A test transmission with RDS2 was put on air by RDS Forum member Attila Ladanyi (T & C Holding) and Joop Beunders (MacBe) together with Seth Stroh and Allen Hartle (both from Jump2Go) demonstrated for the first time the RDS2 transmission and reception of image files of station logos and music cover art using RDS2.

2015-06 The RDS Forum agreed to go ahead with RDS2.

2014-11 At an RDS Forum workshop held at Magyar Radio in Budapest the RDS experts attending recommended to the RDS Forum 2015 to give green light to standardizing RDS2 as a new option for using RDS.

2014-06 At the RDS Forum meeting in Glion it was decided to have a feasibility study of xRDS, a proposal from RDS Forum member Attila Ladanyi, later known as RDS2, by a small team of RDS experts during a workshop in Budapest

The objectives for the workshop were:

  1. Define the technical and upgradable architecture bases on agreed standards and regulations,
  2. Ensure complete backwards compatibility with RDS,
  3. Establish a set of high level customer requirements (PS names up to 16 characters and UTF8 coded),
  4. Identify existing unused functions within RDS,
  5. Identify the work items and expertise needed to integrate RDS2 into the RDS standard.