anybody know if the Z1 had RDS capabilities?

it surprises me that some of the el cheapo single DIN units seem to have it but not the Z1

all the FM stations in my market (NY) transmit title/artist info on RDS, would be nice to have.

I've not found a way to enable RDS either and I've not found any Z1 literature that indicates it has RDS.

I think it's lame their top end nav head unit doesn't have RDS and I'd definitely like to have it as well since all stations here in Seattle broadcast RDS signals as well. It's a bit lame that presets take up such a large part of the UI to show a few numbers when they could display the station name and then artist / song info up at the top just like the other system inputs (XM, CD, Library etc).

My AVIC N1 did not have RDS either. I had replaced another lower Pioneer head unit, and it had RDS. I thought it strange too that there was no RDS capabilities, but I found that I rarely listened to FM anyways. Always either XM, my CD Changer, or music on my hard drive.

I think it's asinine that it doesn't include RDS, especially the Z1, and all Pioneer Navigation units. I wonder if there's a code...

Look at this Kenwood unit for $1000. No navigation, yet...
1. RDS capable
2. DVD capable
3. HD Radio Ready
4. Security Code
5. Dual Zone for Front and Rear
6. Advanced Crossover (remember SFEQ - Sound Focus Equalizer?)
7. Navigation Input (so it's Navigation Ready)
8. JPG/MPEG playback
9. Included Remote

The Navigation function is another $800, http://www.crutchfield.com/S-G4aPzVy1ln ... 113KNAG510

It's NavTraffic capable, though...

There's also the MusicKeg Hard Disk add-on for it, which WILL INTERFACE WITH THE PC!!!

Pioneer's navigation systems are very good, but lacking in the little grab-me features. RDS is just one of them. It doesn't cost much to add it -- many tuners have the demultiplexing scheme built in.

RDS is a 57kHz signal on the FM carrier signal (the signal that you tune in to, like 99.9 or 103.5) with digital information that gets decoded. Chips to decode it cost pennies literally -- then its all controller-based from there.

What sucks is that years ago Pioneer was one of the only companies that supported RDS. Back then, none of the radio stations bothered to use it to display song information so they took it out of ALL of their tuners. So now we have nothing, and everybody wants it. Crappy how that worked