Visteon Promotes Digital Radio Mondiale for Automotive Applications

Through a collaborative project with the RTL Group, Europe's leading broadcasting and production company, Visteon Corporation will demonstrate an in-vehicle Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) receiver at the IFA World of Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin, Sept. 2-7. The Visteon DRM, FM & AM CD-Tuner will be on display at the DRM Automotive Digital Radio booth (hall 5.2a - stand 102).

With support of the RTL Group, Visteon has contributed its audio and infotainment expertise to develop a modified radio receiver for DRM signal reception. The RTL Group is one of the key members of the Digital Radio Mondiale consortium.

The introduction of Digital Radio Mondiale will enable broadcasters to continue moving radio technology from analog to digital format, increasing sound and content quality. As a key benefit of DRM, consumers will be able to receive broadcasts in their homes and cars. DRM is designed to deliver a noise- and hiss-free sound quality, substantially improved over conventional analog radio. Most importantly for drivers, as already demonstrated in test drives, DRM can generally deliver excellent reception results in vehicles, even at high speeds.

"Digital Radio Mondiale is already aired in more than 30 countries with broadcast members from all six continents," said Gerhard Zeiler, RTL Group's chief executive officer. "Many broadcasters have committed to the DRM format including RTL Group stations."

Linda Rivers Bell, Visteon's electronics product strategy and planning director, points out that Visteon's infotainment and sound management capabilities are well established in the automotive industry, "We are prepared to deliver automotive grade DRM solutions, whenever the market is ready."

Visteon designs, tests and engineers sound systems for the automotive environment that accurately reproduce sound across all broadcast standards. Visteon is already supplying HD Radio/In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) modules and Satellite Radio Systems in North America, as well as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) modules in Europe.

"As a strong supporter of new technologies, we consider DRM a complementary technology to the existing digital radio standards," says Bell.

The first DRM receivers will be available immediately following the IFA consumer show as tabletop radios able to receive DRM, DAB, FM and AM bands. Portable radios are expected to follow in 2006 and the market is expecting the first automotive solutions to follow thereafter.