I've approached my dealership, FCA as well as UCONNECT regarding the issue, none will admit a problem.
The symptom is this: On certain FM radio stations, the display data showing the song, artist, station etc is missing up to three characters at the end of the message. So Copperhead Road by Steve Earle, is displayed as "Copperhead Road by Steve Ear", 21 Summer by Brothers Osborne shows as "21 Summer by Brothers Osborn" and Gold by Kiiara becomes "Gold BY Kiia".
My dealership claims that this problem is the radio stations are sending the data wrongly. In my area we have 5 FM stations with RBDS, four of them have the problem. I approached the stations about it, and they all claim that there is nothing wrong with their signals because it looks perfectly fine on their cars.
Here's the kicker: I went back to the Dodge dealership, asked to sit in some new vehicles, and ALL OF THEM had the same issue! I sat in various models of caravan, RAM pickups, a 2015 dart, a caliber, and they all had various styles of UCONNECT head units from 8.4 inch touchscreens to fluorescent two-line displays, and they all did it on the same stations.
Being a technology guy, I did some research: The issue is actually an implementation problem with RBDS that stems from vagueness in the specification's language. To make a very long story much shorter, it's nobody's fault. The radio stations send the data literally, and that's all they technically have to do. The receivers decode it, but in the spec, the receiver is supposed to discard any (4 character) data field that isn't fully populated because it is probably an error and all fields should be filled to all four characters. The messages are sent as a series of four character fields, as well as other error-checking information. Somehow this leads to UCONNECT owners having to put up with missing characters and no hope of resolution.
Radio stations in MOST markets add extra data to their RBDS fields so that every radio will display it correctly no matter what. It's a feature of most encoder devices that can be enabled. My local stations are either unwilling to accommodate (Bell Media) or unable to figure it out (Riding Mountain Broadcasting), and one station (CBC Radio One) has no problem. I have been to Winnipeg with the dart, and noticed that ALL of their stations display correctly with the exception of Bell Media properties.
I approached FCA about it, and was informed that this is between myself and UCONNECT. OK, fine, I reached out to UCONNECT with a very detailed analysis of my findings, and they eventually concluded that it's not their problem either.
So I went to some dealership lots of other brands such as Ford, and Hyundai. Guess what? NONE of their vehicles have any such problems displaying the data accurately.
It's clear that UCONNECT as well as Fiat Chrysler, have no desire to produce or support a quality product.
I think for my next purchase I'll roll the dice and try another brand, maybe they will care about their products working correctly?
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
I've approached my dealership, FCA as well as UCONNECT regarding the issue, none will admit a problem.
The symptom is this: On certain FM radio stations, the display data showing the song, artist, station etc is missing up to three characters at the end of the message. So Copperhead Road by Steve Earle, is displayed as "Copperhead Road by Steve Ear", 21 Summer by Brothers Osborne shows as "21 Summer by Brothers Osborn" and Gold by Kiiara becomes "Gold BY Kiia".
My dealership claims that this problem is the radio stations are sending the data wrongly. In my area we have 5 FM stations with RBDS, four of them have the problem. I approached the stations about it, and they all claim that there is nothing wrong with their signals because it looks perfectly fine on their cars.
Here's the kicker: I went back to the Dodge dealership, asked to sit in some new vehicles, and ALL OF THEM had the same issue! I sat in various models of caravan, RAM pickups, a 2015 dart, a caliber, and they all had various styles of UCONNECT head units from 8.4 inch touchscreens to fluorescent two-line displays, and they all did it on the same stations.
Being a technology guy, I did some research: The issue is actually an implementation problem with RBDS that stems from vagueness in the specification's language. To make a very long story much shorter, it's nobody's fault. The radio stations send the data literally, and that's all they technically have to do. The receivers decode it, but in the spec, the receiver is supposed to discard any (4 character) data field that isn't fully populated because it is probably an error and all fields should be filled to all four characters. The messages are sent as a series of four character fields, as well as other error-checking information. Somehow this leads to UCONNECT owners having to put up with missing characters and no hope of resolution.
Radio stations in MOST markets add extra data to their RBDS fields so that every radio will display it correctly no matter what. It's a feature of most encoder devices that can be enabled. My local stations are either unwilling to accommodate (Bell Media) or unable to figure it out (Riding Mountain Broadcasting), and one station (CBC Radio One) has no problem. I have been to Winnipeg with the dart, and noticed that ALL of their stations display correctly with the exception of Bell Media properties.
I approached FCA about it, and was informed that this is between myself and UCONNECT. OK, fine, I reached out to UCONNECT with a very detailed analysis of my findings, and they eventually concluded that it's not their problem either.
So I went to some dealership lots of other brands such as Ford, and Hyundai. Guess what? NONE of their vehicles have any such problems displaying the data accurately.
It's clear that UCONNECT as well as Fiat Chrysler, have no desire to produce or support a quality product.
I think for my next purchase I'll roll the dice and try another brand, maybe they will care about their products working correctly?
- Auke D., Brandon, MB, Canada