OT what's the Oz standard - 24 hour Time display or 12:00 Hour

I recently bought an TDK/Imation I-Wave (see

for brochure) as a birthday present for my son with the intention he use it as a clock-radio as well as a docking station for his various Ipods. It works fine as a Ipod docking station and as an FM radio (although the touch controls are bit hit and miss and fiddly). However, the main bugbear is that in clock mode it only displays 24 hour time rather than 12 hour am/pm time. Yes it easy to deduct 12 hours to get a PM time but my son (and I) find this annoying. The instruction manual refers to a 12 hr display and you can see there are am pm flags in the LCD display. We contacted Imation to see if there was a way to change the display to 12 hour format but after several weeks and various emails the email reply today is: "I have just received a response from Jason Oh the product manager for these products and his comments as to the 12/24hr clock are...... "I have checked with the factory, the 24 hour clock is not a design fault for TDK LoR iWave ADS-50SS. It is a design theme for the model concept." "

My reply to this was:

"This is akin to Microsoft bugs being described as an "undocumented feature". The instruction manual

refers to a 12 hr mode and the LCD has an "am" and "pm" flag so it seems there was meant to be provision for it. What household in Australia wants a 24 hour time display? AM/PM is the norm and I will be returning to the retailer as "not fit for purpose." "

If it was a DVD recorder or something similar I could live with it but this thing is in part promoted as a clock radio. What do you think? Am I right in assuming Australia time standard is the 12 hour mode. I see BOMA uses 12 hour am/pm it for weather forecasts and outside of shortwave broadcast I am not aware of any radio or TV station in Australia that announces the "19:00 Hours news" rather than the "7 pm News". Does anyone know if there is actually an Australian standard as such or there has been some formal Government adoption of the 12 hour format?

I'm not really that stressed about it and I expect JB HiFi would accept the return anyway if we pursue that but I am just interested in forum member's views on:

a) any evidence of Australia having formally adopted the 12 hour am/pm time standard; b) the acceptability of promoting a product in Australia as in part a clock radio without making it clear it only has a 24 hour format; and c) if anyone has opened one up or has a circuit diagram and found a internal switch or hard wiring option to change the time format?

BTW the thing works fine as an FM radio and Ipod docking station and sounds great given its size and price.

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Regards
Blue

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