EAS (Emergency Alert System)

carljanderson

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#41

Post by carljanderson » Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:02 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:tzr916, I think your problem is unique (the Red Hat Linux message). But, I wonder if the problems mentioned in this thread are only from Comcast subscribers.
Nope, have the EAS issues and I am on FiOS in VHO3.

barnabas1969

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#42

Post by barnabas1969 » Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:19 pm

carljanderson wrote:
barnabas1969 wrote:tzr916, I think your problem is unique (the Red Hat Linux message). But, I wonder if the problems mentioned in this thread are only from Comcast subscribers.
Nope, have the EAS issues and I am on FiOS in VHO3.
I meant unique in that tzr916 doesn't just have EAS messages that won't go away and/or lockup his Echo. His actually displays a Linux login prompt.

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STC

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#43

Post by STC » Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:55 pm

Has anyone done a NSA joke yet?
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richard1980

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#44

Post by richard1980 » Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:46 pm

Shhh...they're watching.

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Crash2009

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#45

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Jan 20, 2014 8:58 pm

STC wrote:Has anyone done a NSA joke yet?
Leno has done a couple.

"The White House today closed the gift shop and opened a Verizon store after it was revealed that the National Security Agency seized millions of Verizon phone records. How ironic is that? We wanted a president who listens to all Americans. Now we have one." –Jay Leno

"Yesterday the FBI admitted they do use drones on U.S. soil for domestic surveillance. The FBI's Robert Mueller told Congress that he does sometimes use drones, but he said the good news is that these drones are made in America, by Americans, to spy on Americans." –Jay Leno

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Jimmersd

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#46

Post by Jimmersd » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:20 pm

I am having this problem right now. The banner has been running pretty much continuously for the last 24 hours. I have tried everything I can think of to reset this since the time window for the *test* has come and gone. I looked at the log on the HDHR Primes and I saw that there is an entry for the message being received at an earlier time, so I reasoned that I could maybe reset my tuners and HTPC. I know that the tuner is not directly responsible for this issue but I thought maybe by resetting the tuner and the HTPC the system would reload clean. Funny thing is that after the tuners rebooted the banner was gone and the message reloaded through the tuner and it re-appeared:

19700101-00:00:03 System: network link 1000f
19700101-00:00:04 System: ip address obtained: 192.168.1.3 / 255.255.255.0
19700101-00:00:06 CableCARD: Cisco card (0103:0001)
20140127-20:18:32 System: time changed from Thu Jan 01 00:00:09 1970 to Mon Jan 27 20:18:32 2014
20140127-20:18:33 CableCARD: authentication status: authentication in progress
20140127-20:18:33 CableCARD: authentication status: authentication success, validation success
20140127-20:24:14 CableCARD: message: A BROADCAST STATION OR CABLE SYSTEM HAS ISSUED A REQUIRED MONTHLY TEST FOR THE FOLLOWING COUNTIES/AREAS: Orange; Brevard; Flagler; Lake; Marion; Osceola; Polk; Seminole; Sumter; Volusia, FL; AT 1:48 PM ON JAN 27, 2014

What that says to me is that someone at the Cable company, or whoever is responsible for such things, has repeatedly run these tests and has failed to correctly set an end time or date for this message. BHN SUX!

I have found that I can change the frame transparency attribute of the message by changing the tasks/settings/tv/CC/advanced/window opacity in WMC . Maybe there is a way to hack the the rest of the message attributes in the Registry.

The only other option would be to wait for MS to release a repair that allows this message to time out after a reasonable time. .......whistles......

barnabas1969

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#47

Post by barnabas1969 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 8:30 pm

@Jimmersd: I live in Brevard county, Florida and I am also on BHN. I have two HD HomeRun PRIME tuners. I was home at that time, and I did not experience this problem.

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Jimmersd

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#48

Post by Jimmersd » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:09 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:@Jimmersd: I live in Brevard county, Florida and I am also on BHN. I have two HD HomeRun PRIME tuners. I was home at that time, and I did not experience this problem.
Interesting. I don't think that the 3CC's reloaded that message from memory in response to power reset. This might be confirmed by the folks at Silicondust. Could it come from the cable adapter?

The EAS message definitely reloaded into a blank log for both tuners after a complete reboot well after the expiration time of the EAS. The problem finally cleared only after I shut down my echos for a couple hours, I have no idea why what might be.

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#49

Post by Sancho » Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:48 am

Jimmersd wrote: I have found that I can change the frame transparency attribute of the message by changing the tasks/settings/tv/CC/advanced/window opacity in WMC . Maybe there is a way to hack the the rest of the message attributes in the Registry.

The only other option would be to wait for MS to release a repair that allows this message to time out after a reasonable time. .......whistles......
I've been motivated to search out this thread, because a 12-hour EAS banner just appeared for an Amber Alert. I've been getting a few recently, and as noted by many, the message runs on past its expiration time, but closing and reopening WMC generally gets rid of it.

I've done the change to the Closed Caption "window opacity" edit, as noted above. I also changed the text size to small. None of the other options seem to matter. It didn't take affect immediately. Just closed WMC, restarted WMC, double-checked the edit...

Nope. Still the same annoying, oversized banner with the blue background. Maybe if I reboot...

Nope. Even tried changing Background Color to White, but no change at all. Maybe with Comcast it's not coded as Closed Captioning.

Time to try Media Center Studio again. Hope I can figure out how to make it transparent at least.

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#50

Post by kd6icz » Thu Aug 27, 2015 3:30 am

Since I swapped out my Ceton's for Prime's a week ago. So the Ceton's didn't actually show the EAS but instead sent WMC to a unresponsive blue screen. The Prime's actually showed me the EAS.

However, after the EAS was complete, the channel didn't come back. Is this normal?

[Moderator note: topic merged]

Rainey

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#51

Post by Rainey » Sat Sep 19, 2015 2:30 am

I have Charter in Michigan, i get EAS alerts all the time for test or bad weather.
I have found that i can make it go away if i exit WMC (Close WMC) then press the Green Button to open WMC again and it is gone.
My only trouble it that sometime the warning coming multiple time during bad weather and i need to do each time.

Of course it always happens during that great movie.

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STC

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#52

Post by STC » Sat Sep 19, 2015 2:24 pm

I believe Ceton have a switch to suppress EAS which can remain active for the time the Infini is up for. It defaults to off on reset. Presumably to comply / get around the standard.
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STC

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#53

Post by STC » Sat Sep 19, 2015 3:50 pm

Just checked:

CableCARD tab / Disable EAS Forwarding

Having hardly any appear in my locale (no child abduction/shootings/tornadoes going on in this wilderness) it's difficult for me to see if it works correctly.
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#54

Post by ajohnson1 » Thu Sep 24, 2015 6:13 pm

STC wrote:Having hardly any appear in my locale (no child abduction/shootings/tornadoes going on in this wilderness) it's difficult for me to see if it works correctly.
Yes, I believe Ceton fixed this issue in their firmware by adding the EAS forwarding option. I used to get these messages regularly, and I haven't seen one in at least a year or two.

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#55

Post by slaingod » Wed Oct 04, 2017 5:05 am

After reading this thread, and the number of merges, I assume moderators want EAS discussions here, even if it means necrothreading. Apologies in advance if that is not the case.

So the WAF had a meltdown because a 'Required Monthly Test' interrupted the end of her show. She was watching live tv but the show was being recorded nonetheless, and the recording was cut off due to the EAS alert. This is with a HDHR Prime, on Comcast, and Xbox 360 as extender. On HDHR site they say that the message will hang the Xbox360 extender for LiveTV, but it is surprising to me that it kills the recording of a scheduled show when these EAS messages come through.

On the HDHR logs I see:
CableCARD: source id 9747 unknown (not found)
several times when this occurs.

Windows Media Center shows that the partial recording was "manually stopped" "for use by another component". Nothing else was recording at the time.

I hadn't seen in the other discussion where it was cutting off people's recordings. Anyone have any ideas on this? I see the Ceton has a flag to disable, but doesn't seem like HDHR has anything to help.

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#56

Post by Space » Wed Oct 04, 2017 6:09 am

The only exposure I've had to the EAS messages are in the HDHR Prime log and once while watching live TV years ago.

Since I don't normally watch live TV, I never see the pop-up (except that one time).

As far as I know, I have never had a recording program be interrupted by an EAS message.

Perhaps the difference here is that she was watching the show while it was recording, but I have never seen anyone complain about that here, so don't know if that is something that would happen every time, or is just a fluke.

I have never seen the error message you mentioned in my logs, so perhaps this was a particular type of EAS message that causes the issue. I think that EAS messages can tell the HDHR to change the channel to present emergency information.

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Crash2009

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#57

Post by Crash2009 » Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:47 am

ajohnson1 wrote:Yes, I believe Ceton fixed this issue in their firmware by adding the EAS forwarding option. I used to get these messages regularly, and I haven't seen one in at least a year or two.
I agree, I havnt seen the EAS since 2012 on my Ceton InfiniTV4 box. I beleive the EAS was disabled with the (as you said) Ceton driver or firmware.

I found Erkotz statement... you're correct, its in the firmare, specifically in the web server.

viewtopic.php?p=76091#p76091

ChrisWB

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#58

Post by ChrisWB » Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:41 am

You can easily hide the EAS alert forever just by editing the EAS script. Hint: <Visible>false </Visible>

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Crash2009

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#59

Post by Crash2009 » Sat Oct 14, 2017 6:42 am

Where is the EAS script? As I understand Erkotz words...the script is the webserver.....inside the tv card.

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#60

Post by ChrisWB » Sat Oct 14, 2017 7:52 am

If you check out this guide, you will notice the file you modify contains more that just background files:
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1 ... round.html

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