Car DVD Player Mysteries – What is PTY?

Many people who are considering buying an aftermarket car DVD player soon find themselves quickly confused by all the acronyms or abbreviations they see in an online ad for some whiz-bang player.

There really is no mystery to what many mean and just a couple of minutes of research can reveal exactly what the player ad says. In this regard, one of the many mysteries of car DVD players: What is PTY? is quickly answered with just a brief reading of this article.

For starters, modern aftermarket car DVD players come with a variety of functions and features.

In addition to the standard radio, TV tuner, and DVD/CD/CD-RW (Compact Disc, Rewritable) and other disc playback and decoding capabilities, the player may also include GPS navigation, Bluetooth communication, Picture-in-Picture (PIP) and other convenience features. One of them is PTY. But what is it and how does it work?

In a nutshell, PTY is a feature offered on many car DVD players sold in various countries that allows the user of the device to search for broadcast radio channels of certain types.

For example, let’s say someone likes the radio or even classical music. In countries that require broadcast signals to contain identification cues, such as the station’s programming format (and most do), the car DVD player will be able to select only those stations that feature those formats.

In the United States, a large national automaker has offered a PTY variation on some of their car radios for years, and it works well for select stations that carry their format types through their signals.

Now that many countries are migrating completely to digital broadcasting, the amount of information that a typical signal can contain is almost limitless. PTY will therefore be seen more frequently in the years to come.

Many aftermarket car DVD players sold in countries where the broadcast standard is DVB-T (“Digital Video Broadcasting? Terrestrial”) offer the PTY function as standard equipment.

This standard is not available in North America, where ATSC replaced the old NTSC standard, so always make sure any aftermarket player you buy comes with the proper broadcast signal tuners for the country you live in.

PTY can be a very convenient feature for users traveling in areas where they are not familiar with radio stations and what their programming formats are.

Going from London, England to Liverpool can mean searching for your favorite ska or jazz music in the new city. Well, with PTY it’s as simple as using the touch screen or remote, selecting the type of music you want the player to find, and then letting it locate a station that plays that type of music.

If there are problems with PTY, it mainly has to do with the feature’s occasional inability to easily identify stations that are not clearly transmitting the correct type of information in their signals.

Sometimes PTY may hang up on a station, in which case it must be manually reassigned. However, it’s not a big deal. So; If you are looking for a good player, know that you can find one that will find you all the stations you want with a simple command.