Amber Alert Seizes Cable Box
Bhairitu
when the Amber Alert went out suddenly seizing my DVR while I was
watching a recording of "True Blood." I thought that the alert was in
the recording and tried to 30-second click then fast forward through it
but nothing would work. I couldn't even exit the recording. Even more
annoying was that the announcement was a good 6 DB louder than the
program.
They've had Amber Alerts before but it was just scrolling text over the
regular program. They must have some problem doing this on HD material
but why bother with the DVR? And not only that it wrecked two shows I
was recording. California bureaucrats are such lunkheads.
QN
think of all the people driving while watching TV.
I had to shut off my alerting weather radio from the same stupid amber
alerts. They would send the emergency alert signal setting off the siren on
the weather radio, and then announce an amber alert for a city 500 miles
away. Weather radios are in homes not cars. Now, if there is a real
weather emergency I won't know about it.
The last time I pointed out this absurdity on USENET I got flamed by female
posters saying how horrible I was for objecting to misdirected amber alerts.
I have no objection to making radio announcements that will be heard in
cars. Heck, if they came out with a cheap car-based amber alert radio, I
might put one in the car. I asked one of the flaming women how many
tornado warnings they should give for each missing child....
David Kaye
> I along with a number of Comcast subscribers were surprised Sunday night
> when the Amber Alert went out suddenly seizing my DVR while I was
> watching a recording of "True Blood."
Why 1984 won't be 1984...yeah, sure. It gives one pause to consider
how nice lower-tech is. My cell phone is a phone. My radio is a
radio. My car doesn't tell me where to go. My life is my own.
John Higdon
"QN" <hiding...@example.com> wrote:
> The last time I pointed out this absurdity on USENET I got flamed by female
> posters saying how horrible I was for objecting to misdirected amber alerts.
> I have no objection to making radio announcements that will be heard in
> cars. Heck, if they came out with a cheap car-based amber alert radio, I
> might put one in the car. I asked one of the flaming women how many
> tornado warnings they should give for each missing child....
As one who has had to put in a considerable amount of time dealing with
how several stations deal with Amber alerts, let me say that you are
whistling in the dark. The fact is that the Amber alerts have resulted
(aren't actual results annoying sometimes?) in the safe recovery of
quite a few children. As much as I personally hate it, it is difficult
to argue with success.
--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last
Patty Winter
>think of all the people driving while watching TV.
>
>I had to shut off my alerting weather radio from the same stupid amber
>alerts. They would send the emergency alert signal setting off the siren on
>the weather radio, and then announce an amber alert for a city 500 miles
>away. Weather radios are in homes not cars.
Do not people in homes sometimes get in their cars and go somewhere?
>Now, if there is a real
>weather emergency I won't know about it.
I haven't heard one of these Amber Alert announcements, but how long
do they take? Weather alerts I've seen usually go on and on continuously,
so wouldn't the Amber Alert only interrupt them for a minute or two?
That's even if the tiny odds play out that both events are happening
simultaneously...
Patty
Bhairitu
Like I said this one took over the DVR and I was watching a recorded
program! I'm going to ask Comcast about it. Perhaps they're working on
an overlay method. But this was just a black screen with white text and
very crude looking. Before such alerts were just scrolling overlaid text
(apparently I was watching an analog station or an upverted analog
program). And I believe at the time they already had the suspect in
custody. A little Orwellian and Barney Fife at the same time.
Bhairitu
Just wait until we get a woman President.
leansto...@democrat.com
OT, but I got one of those HD Homerun boxes you mentioned. Very cool.
I set up MythTV as a PVR. [Not cool. It was an 90 minutes ordeal.]
leansto...@democrat.com
Some cars have weather radios. However, I haven't seen a car with
SAME.
===========
8. Can I get NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts in my car?
Several automobile manufacturers (BMW, Mercedes, Range Rover and Saab)
equip their cars with radios capable of receiving NWR broadcasts.
Several manufacturers of car radios (Audiovox, Clarion and Panasonic)
sell in-dash units capable of receiving NWR broadcasts.
Manufacturers of citizen band radios with NWR channels include Cobra,
Maxon, Midland, Radio Shack and Uniden.
Maybe
> I haven't heard one of these Amber Alert announcements, but how long
> do they take? Weather alerts I've seen usually go on and on continuously,
> so wouldn't the Amber Alert only interrupt them for a minute or two?
> That's even if the tiny odds play out that both events are happening
> simultaneously...
The same thing happened to me. I was watching something on the DVR
and it stopped the recording and stopped any control I had over the
TV. It is not the first time it has happened to me. They take over
the TV, the DVR and any recording you are doing and they last at
least five minutes. They start the alert, they make the announcement,
the screen flashes the announcement and then they repeat the
announcement.
I'm home trying to watch TV and I don't even have a car so the whole
thing is useless to me. If they are going to do these alerts, they
should do them for people in their cars who are actually on the road
and can spot the license plate of the wanted car.
I understand the importance of the alerts but don't cripple my TV for
five minutes for something that I can't do anything about.
Maybe...and it is the same with the emergency broadcast system test
thingie
>
> Patty
Patty Winter
In article <6d8aaa65-958c-4513...@r2g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Maybe <Maybe...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>The same thing happened to me. I was watching something on the DVR
>and it stopped the recording and stopped any control I had over the
>TV.
Weird.
>they last at
>least five minutes. They start the alert, they make the announcement,
>the screen flashes the announcement and then they repeat the
>announcement.
I'm surprised they take that long. I'd expect them to last about
the same length as the Amber Alerts I've heard on regular radios
(not weather radios), which are maybe 45-60 seconds.
> If they are going to do these alerts, they
>should do them for people in their cars who are actually on the road
How exactly would that work? Even with digital AM and FM, I'm not
aware of any capability that allows signals to be sent only to
selected recipients, such as radios that are installed in cars.
Would the government, the auto companies, or the radio manufacturers
be responsible for maintaining that database?
Even if that were possible, how would they know that the car was
on the road rather than in a garage? Would they target cars that
have FastTrak transponders whose signals have been picked up as
moving recently? I hope that isn't what you're suggesting!
Patty
Bhairitu
I tried MythTV and didn't like it. Someone wrote some Linux bash
scripts for the HDHomeRun and I use those to record shows.
Ciccio
> I haven't heard one of these Amber Alert announcements, but how long
> do they take?
About as long as those irritating and useless EAS RWTs.
Ciccio
norml
features of both of these exercises was the inordinate amount of time it
took for the system to revert to normal after the end tones.
I missed a crucial plot point on a Law and Order rerun.
Norm
Bhairitu <nooz...@sbcglobal.net> wrotf:
Phil Kane
wrote:
>Maybe...and it is the same with the emergency broadcast system test
>thingie
Simple solution:
Send a petition to the Secretary of the FCC in the proper format
starting with the mantra: "I hereby request that Part 11 of the FCC
Rules be amended as follows...."
Until that time, broadcast stations and cable systems are obligated to
follow EAS requirements. As an active EmComm participant and leader I
support that. Whether or not EAS requirements make sense is an
exercise left to the observers. The participants are too busy doing
it.
End of matter.....
--
Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR
Phil Kane
<franc...@comcast.net> wrote:
>About as long as those irritating and useless EAS RWTs.
Useless to you, valuable to others. You don't live in the EmComm
world. My wife always marvels when I turn UP the volume when an EAS
test is heard.
David Eduardo
"norml" <norm...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:c5bq559ncq6hsp9h4...@4ax.com...
> The monthly EAS test did the same thing this morning. One of the annoying
> features of both of these exercises was the inordinate amount of time it
> took for the system to revert to normal after the end tones.
>
> I missed a crucial plot point on a Law and Order rerun.
Yeah, better a dead child than you should miss some annoying TV show.
Jed
Stop it. You're turning me into a flint-hearted conservative.
The point is that there should be a better way of displaying these
alerts, some method that does not prevent the viewer from continuing
to watch progamming, recording, change the channel, or turn the system
off.
For the EAS participants: What is the philosophy behind taking control
of the system during the alert? Is it to force people to pay attention
or is it some technical limitation?
John Slade
"Bhairitu" <nooz...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:7v67m.12$ZU...@newsfe16.iad...
I'm getting sick of these tests and alerts. Well the alerts I don't
mind so much but the tests. How is it that they can have a weekly test every
three days and a monthly test every week? And I swear whoever flips the
switch, waits until the worst possible moment to do so.
John
norml
>
>"norml" <norm...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
>> I missed a crucial plot point on a Law and Order rerun.
>
>Yeah, better a dead child than you should miss some annoying TV show.
Time to send your irony meter in for recalibration, David.
Alan
With that kind of "It's for the childreeen" whine, you might as well justify
ringing everyone's phone for the announcement as well.
There are appropriate venues for such information. Those are venues where
the listeners CHOOSE to get the information. Weather receivers let one specify
what area of weather alerts are desired --- and which are not. If a listener
(or non-listener in the case of weather receivers) does not want such alerts,
they should not be forced to receive them.
Alan
chris319
1240 kc for further information. Those circled triangles are my tuning
aids.
Is it accurate to say the Emergency Amber System is the most recent
incarnation of CONELRAD, which was supposed to prevent another Pearl-
Harbor-style attack and later to let us know when the Ruskies had
fired a nuke this way so we could all pile into our fallout shelters
and be cooked like so many poodles in microwave ovens? I'm all for
children being rescued but I'm not the first person to wonder why we
never hear peep out of the Emergency Amber System after a true
emergency such as a major earthquake or an attack on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. Every time I raise this point I'm told, "that
kind of thing is best left to the all-news stations". So remind me
again, aside from Amber alerts and tornado warnings, why we still have
this leftover from the cold war.
spamtrap1888
> I'm all for
> children being rescued but I'm not the first person to wonder why we
> never hear peep out of the Emergency Amber System after a true
> emergency such as a major earthquake or an attack on the World Trade
> Center and the Pentagon. Every time I raise this point I'm told, "that
> kind of thing is best left to the all-news stations". So remind me
> again, aside from Amber alerts and tornado warnings, why we still have
> this leftover from the cold war.
"after" -- It's a warning system. It's designed to warn people that
imminent danger is coming their way, not to tell you that something
happened >2000 miles away.
I've heard it in the ba to deliver flood warnings.
David Kaye
> I'm home trying to watch TV and I don't even have a car so the whole
> thing is useless to me. If they are going to do these alerts, they
> should do them for people in their cars who are actually on the road
> and can spot the license plate of the wanted car.
You never leave your house? You don't walk to the market or take a
bus anywhere? You never see any cars parked in your neighborhood?
Remember that if someone is going to abduct someone they're eventually
going to park somewhere, perhaps in your neighborhood.
There may be a legitimate point about an abduction 300 miles away,
HOWEVER, it's possible to drive 300 miles in just a few hours, and
it's been done by abductors.
The real problem seems to be false alarms. From the Wikipedia entry:
"A Scripps Howard study of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in the United
States in 2004 found that most issued alerts did not meet the
Department of Justice's criteria. Fully 50% (117 alerts) were
categorized by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as
being "family abductions," very often a parent involved in a custody
dispute. There were 48 alerts for children who had not been abducted
at all, but were lost, ran away, involved in family misunderstandings
(for example, two instances where the child was with grandparents), or
as the result of hoaxes. Another 23 alerts were issued in cases where
police didn't know the name of the allegedly abducted child, often as
the result of misunderstandings by witnesses who reported an
abduction."
John Higdon
<191b9e4d-8956-4b8b...@d4g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
chris319 <c319...@aol.com> wrote:
> I'm all for
> children being rescued but I'm not the first person to wonder why we
> never hear peep out of the Emergency Amber System after a true
> emergency such as a major earthquake or an attack on the World Trade
> Center and the Pentagon.
I hear this all the time. The Emergency ALERT System is a warning
device, not a news and information after the fact service.
> Every time I raise this point I'm told, "that
> kind of thing is best left to the all-news stations". So remind me
> again, aside from Amber alerts and tornado warnings, why we still have
> this leftover from the cold war.
Actually, it is used here during the winter when the rains start to fall
the the rivers rise. This region, however, doesn't have the plethora of
"warnable" events that you find in parts of the country that have real
weather.
Believe me, if and when a predictable and significant means of
predicting earthquakes comes about, you WILL hear earthquake warnings on
EAS. Once the event happens, it moves beyond the purview of EAS and
becomes material for ordinary broadcast radio.
By the way, it should be noted that immediately following the '89 Loma
Prieta earthquake, some unlikely stations temporarily dropped their
formats went wall to wall with notices of shelter locations, supplies to
repair urgent damage (water pipes, walls about to fall down, etc.), road
closures, etc. One of them was KOME, one of the few stations left on the
air in the south bay, mainly because they had emergency power at both
the studio and the transmitter.
A number of stations showed what they were made of right after the
earthquake. But you're right: EAS was not involved, nor was it designed
to be.
leansto...@democrat.com
MythTV is damn complicated. Front end, back end. Mysql. It is very
powerful, but I can see people throwing up their hands in disgust over
how complicated it is. I would have designed a browser scheme to
configure the system, not Qt. Granted, not everyone runs apache on
their home machines, but Qt graphics is sometimes cryptic as to what
is being selected.
I have to give Silicon Dust a lot of credit. With very little work,
you can quickly verify the system works. One click and you have
videolan displaying the content. I've run the box on both windows and
suse linux.
I'm having a hard time thinking of anything I ever bought designed in
New Zealand. Who knew they had geeks!
Bhairitu
BTW, on Windows there is a license for ArcSoft's Total Media program
that comes with HDHomerun. You might find that easier to use than
MythTV though I'm not impressed with it either. In fact often when I
would do a scan it would would just poop out. I notice others have
found the same thing and Arcsoft never has fixed it.
Phil Kane
<zyzygy@plenip�tentiary.com.invalid> wrote:
>For the EAS participants: What is the philosophy behind taking control
>of the system during the alert? Is it to force people to pay attention
>or is it some technical limitation?
All EAS messages transmitted to the public are relayed from somewhere
else, such as an Emergency Operating Center (EOC) or the National
Weather Service (NWS). The system allows certain delays before
certain types of messages are transmitted to the public providing
there is a human in charge at the final transmission point such as the
radio/TV station. If it's an unattended system such as the vast
majority of cable systems, it must be transmitted without delay.
Yes, the system is designed to force people to pay attention. Whether
it succeeds or not is another exercise left to the observers.
Phil Kane
wrote:
>Is it accurate to say the Emergency Amber System is the most recent
>incarnation of CONELRAD, which was supposed to prevent another Pearl-
>Harbor-style attack and later to let us know when the Ruskies had
>fired a nuke this way so we could all pile into our fallout shelters
>and be cooked like so many poodles in microwave ovens? I'm all for
>children being rescued but I'm not the first person to wonder why we
>never hear peep out of the Emergency Amber System after a true
>emergency such as a major earthquake or an attack on the World Trade
>Center and the Pentagon. Every time I raise this point I'm told, "that
>kind of thing is best left to the all-news stations". So remind me
>again, aside from Amber alerts and tornado warnings, why we still have
>this leftover from the cold war.
1. There is no such systems as the Emergency Amber System. Do you
mean the Emergency Alert System?
2. The EAS is used for essential notifications of emergency
information to the public - serious weather warnings, flood warnings,
disaster response and recovery operation announcements, and very
recently, Amber Alerts. Those of us who live in areas that do not
have those problems should consider ourselves very lucky. There is a
(hopefully rarely used) hierarchy of messages for national, state, and
local emergencies. The "Digital Duck Splats" at the beginning of each
message carry the information of what type of message is being
transmitted and what area it is intended for.
3. FYI - in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake, the
Emergency Broadcast system - the predecessor to the EAS, was activated
but in his infinite wisdom, then-Mayor Art Agnos of SF delivered a
political address instead of the Declaration of Emergency which was
necessary to trigger certain mutual aid and resource activation - ask
Bill Ruck, he was the remote engineer who was there. Garbage in ==
garbage out.
4. As an EmComm professional, the last thing that I want to rely on
is the local "all news stations" being the sole conduit for emergency
communication to the public. They have their purpose - but that is
not one of them.
Bhairitu
Doing a search on Google for Comcast and Amber Alerts it appears that
Comcast spent more money on PR saying "look how wonderful we are for
implementing this" than actually implementing it. Their implementation
was dreadful and unprofessional. Why BTW interrupt a broadcast network
show which probably displayed the message as a crawl? Anyone know how
this worked OTA?
Phil Kane
<sfdavi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>The real problem seems to be false alarms. From the Wikipedia entry:
>
>"A Scripps Howard study of the 233 AMBER Alerts issued in the United
>States in 2004 found that most issued alerts did not meet the
>Department of Justice's criteria. Fully 50% (117 alerts) were
>categorized by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as
>being "family abductions," very often a parent involved in a custody
>dispute. There were 48 alerts for children who had not been abducted
>at all, but were lost, ran away, involved in family misunderstandings
>(for example, two instances where the child was with grandparents), or
>as the result of hoaxes. Another 23 alerts were issued in cases where
>police didn't know the name of the allegedly abducted child, often as
>the result of misunderstandings by witnesses who reported an
>abduction."
The above deals not with the working of the system but with the
veracity of the information being passed. The EAS system, when used
properly, can deliver the information to the public. The quality
control of the information is not the function of the operators of the
system. We run into this controversy all the time in EmComm. My
terminal and radio operators are not to be the evaluators of the
information contained in the messages other than to make sure that the
addresses are in correct format and the body of the message is legible
before accepting it for transmission (we have a screener who does that
for us).
Garbage in == garbage out.
--
Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR
Technical Operations Manager
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center
Disaster Communications Team
John Higdon
Bhairitu <nooz...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Why BTW interrupt a broadcast network
> show which probably displayed the message as a crawl?
One reason would be to get your attention. TV screens are so cluttered
with crawls, animated bugs, a half-dozen windows (all changing at
different times), and animated, exploding text that the only real way to
get the viewer's attention is to kill what's going on, and put the
message on the air in a way that doesn't compete with a dozen other
things.
Whether you believe the message involved is important enough for such
treatment is not what I'm addressing. I'm merely suggesting a possible
reason for the practice itself.
chris319
> It's a warning system. It's designed to warn people that
> imminent danger is coming their way, not to tell you that something
> happened >2000 miles away.
An Amber Alert can only happen after the fact. It is not something you
can warn the public of in advance. An Amber Alert is not "imminent
danger" or an emergency. That's not to say that Amber Alerts are not a
worthwhile use of the system.
> Actually, it is used here during the winter when the rains start to fall
> the the rivers rise. This region, however, doesn't have the plethora of
> "warnable" events that you find in parts of the country that have real
> weather.
That's a fair statement. In 30 years in L.A. I've seen EAS used just
once, when KTLA interrupted a sitcom rerun late at night to advise of
high wind warnings in the desert.
> 1. There is no such systems as the Emergency Amber System. Do you
> mean the Emergency Alert System?
No, I mean the Emergency Amber System. That's my name for it now, as
one of its main uses is to disseminate Amber Alerts.
John Higdon
<30e21999-0001-49f3...@f20g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
chris319 <c319...@aol.com> wrote:
> No, I mean the Emergency Amber System. That's my name for it now, as
> one of its main uses is to disseminate Amber Alerts.
Only in the summertime, although I do believe I have actually heard some
activations for "high pollution levels" (oh, puhleeze!) and high-heat
warnings (double oh, puhleeze).
I find the use of the "Amber Alert" a bit offensive and misuse of the
EAS, but I'm out-shouted by those who remind me of the success rate and
the benefits derived. Well, all right. It's only one event code and a
group of location codes (although most Amber alerts are statewide) so I
guess I can survive.
leansto...@democrat.com
I couldn't get Arcsoft to load on a 64 bit windows os (x64) . Anyway,
I do all server functions under linux. I limit my windows use to one
desktop and one multi-os notebook.
The problem with MythTV is the developers are too close to the
project. They can't see the difficulty because it isn't difficult for
them. That is how you separate product development from engineering.
Mike Ward
wrote:
>No, I mean the Emergency Amber System. That's my name for it now, as
>one of its main uses is to disseminate Amber Alerts.
And here in Ohio as well, though it's also heavily used to provide
weather warnings (tornado, severe thunderstorm, etc.).
What if there are so many of those warnings that people are used to
it? I imagine the folks in Oklahoma get tornado warnings every other
day.
NoOp
> I along with a number of Comcast subscribers were surprised Sunday night
> when the Amber Alert went out suddenly seizing my DVR while I was
> watching a recording of "True Blood." I thought that the alert was in
> the recording and tried to 30-second click then fast forward through it
> but nothing would work. I couldn't even exit the recording. Even more
> annoying was that the announcement was a good 6 DB louder than the
> program.
>
> They've had Amber Alerts before but it was just scrolling text over the
> regular program. They must have some problem doing this on HD material
> but why bother with the DVR? And not only that it wrecked two shows I
> was recording. California bureaucrats are such lunkheads.
First time I've seen one like this. What was even more annoying was the
fact that they didn't even print the license number on the screen, they
only announced it via audio. Not much use if you're hearing impaired...