EAS - Emergency Alert System - Just did a test local channel -- Wutt? | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 31534984 United States 04/10/2014 02:20 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Mechatronics User ID: 56538380 United States 04/10/2014 02:55 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | All TV stations are required to do weekly EAS tests, its nothing new. They usually wait until late at night or early in the morning when there are fewer viewers to disrupt. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31534984 I wish you were correct. Here in MA, last 2 nights, early morning I have seen them and someone speaks a message. Whereas that seems ordinary, never in my life has an EAS broadcast ever included a vocal message. note: I worked for the cable company for 6 years, so I have some background with these messages. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 31534984 United States 04/10/2014 03:03 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | All TV stations are required to do weekly EAS tests, its nothing new. They usually wait until late at night or early in the morning when there are fewer viewers to disrupt. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31534984 I wish you were correct. Here in MA, last 2 nights, early morning I have seen them and someone speaks a message. Whereas that seems ordinary, never in my life has an EAS broadcast ever included a vocal message. note: I worked for the cable company for 6 years, so I have some background with these messages. I've been in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Illinois over the years when I've seen these EAS messages. Each time they were accompanied by a voice that says something along the lines of "This is a required weekly test of the Emergency Alert System.....". This is nothing new and nothing out of the ordinary. |
Schlomp User ID: 56390347 United States 04/10/2014 03:21 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | I have also worked for several cable companies, specifically in their head-ends. Each cable TV operator is required to have EAS gear in their head-end that is capable of receiving feeds from federal authorities (via SAT) and local authorities via local AV insertion at head-end or hub. In Southeast Wisconsin for example, we built fiber into every municipality we have a franchise agreement with. This fiber is used to allow these municipalities to broadcast their village/town/city board meetings as well as broadcast local EAS info. The commercial EAS gear in the head-end is made by several different manufacturers (Scientific Atlanta, Blonder Tongue, etc) and each manufacturer has a different way of scheduling and displaying mandatory weekly tests. This is why these messages always seem different from area to area across the country. Some equipment is older and some more modern. Some includes audio as part of their tests, while others do not. All equipment has the ability to automatically and instantly override all channels of a cable lineup, whether using the IF loop of modulators (analog) or the mPEG streams of QAM encoders (digital) with the single broadcast feed from the EAS satellite receiver located in the head-end (messages from FEMA and other federal emergency government authorities. Satellite TV providers (Dish, Direct TV) are even capable of offering this at a local level by taking advantage of "spot-beam" technology. It's all pretty cool stuff. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 56572180 United Kingdom 04/10/2014 04:17 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | All TV stations are required to do weekly EAS tests, its nothing new. They usually wait until late at night or early in the morning when there are fewer viewers to disrupt. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31534984 I wish you were correct. Here in MA, last 2 nights, early morning I have seen them and someone speaks a message. Whereas that seems ordinary, never in my life has an EAS broadcast ever included a vocal message. note: I worked for the cable company for 6 years, so I have some background with these messages. I've been in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Illinois over the years when I've seen these EAS messages. Each time they were accompanied by a voice that says something along the lines of "This is a required weekly test of the Emergency Alert System.....". This is nothing new and nothing out of the ordinary. we never get them here why do you even NEED them? normalcy bias at its finest |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 56604906 United Kingdom 04/10/2014 04:51 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | interestingly or not, they have just started trials on a new emergency alert/broadcast system in the UK, the trials ran last year and recent news is that the system is moving forward.. handy for any potential WW3 situations. Although given how the last system was known as the 4 min warning, it'll probably only be enough time to kiss your arse goodbye. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 56604906 United Kingdom 04/10/2014 04:53 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | All TV stations are required to do weekly EAS tests, its nothing new. They usually wait until late at night or early in the morning when there are fewer viewers to disrupt. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31534984 I wish you were correct. Here in MA, last 2 nights, early morning I have seen them and someone speaks a message. Whereas that seems ordinary, never in my life has an EAS broadcast ever included a vocal message. note: I worked for the cable company for 6 years, so I have some background with these messages. I've been in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Illinois over the years when I've seen these EAS messages. Each time they were accompanied by a voice that says something along the lines of "This is a required weekly test of the Emergency Alert System.....". This is nothing new and nothing out of the ordinary. we never get them here why do you even NEED them? normalcy bias at its finest I think because they had longer the 4 mins we had/have to kisses our arses goodbye... any longer and it is possible it might make a difference, 4 mins warning is not going to make any difference.. |