The $200 component (the tuner module) is NOT the one with the bug. The bug is in the free v2.00 software upgrade you have for your Empeg/Rio Car player. You could always bump it back to the s/w version that came with it originally, and the problem may go away. Or use v2-beta13. Or write a quick hack for hijack to blot out all of the RDS data (if possible).

Cheers