*ALERT* National Emergency Alert 11/9/2011

Some of the cable companies are warning that their DVRs may become unresponsive after the test.

Curious to see how the DIRECTV receivers will fare.

 

They're just preparing for the inevitable zombiepocolypse.

 

Soap opera buffs will just love this...

 

being as how i am in oklahoma...we have had 4 earthquakes in the last week one of which was 5.6 and set a new record...we had a 4.7 yesterday amidst tornado warning and combined with the asteroid passing close to earth this evening...im voting for zombiepocolypse

 

Well, the CDC has you covered.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

 

Don't worry. Everything will be fine....UNLESS you live in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Then you might want to think about evacuating.

 

That landing had been switched to Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field to give the Eagles some sort of an excuse.

 

At 2 PM EST, I'm watching the DVR. So I'll probably wont even notice.

 

Wonder if there will still be gravity?

 

Yes there will but your hdd's will spin backwards revealing the zombie's universal plan.

 

are the premium stations like HBO, and Starz participating in the test?

 

I'm pretty sure that it's not a matter of participation it's just an overlay that DirecTV puts on the screen, like if there's a tornado warning or something but at least with DirecTV you could make it go away.

With analog cable, there's nothing you can do about it and when I had TWC digital cable, there was nothing you could do to make it go away either.

 

Indeed. We have both Comcast and DirecTV here. With Comcast, any EAS message (including tests) causes all cable boxes to automatically tune to a special EAS channel that broadcasts the message. The front panel of the box will read "EAS" during this time, and no action by the user will be acknowledged by the box. After the message finishes, assuming the box behaves the way it should, it will automatically tune back to whatever channel it was on prior to the alert. Any recordings that were in progress are suspended until the alert is over, resulting in two partial recordings in the playlist with a minute or two missing in between. This is true even if the background tuner is open for recording to continue during the alert. On rare occasions, a box will not become aware of the alert's completion and get stuck in EAS mode until you unplug the box. This has happened once that I know of with one of our SD cable boxes (not the HD DVR, thankfully).

What really annoys me is that the boxes pay no attention to what part of the region the alert is intended. There is a special code associated with EAS alerts that identifies exactly where the emergency applies. However, cable boxes do not pay any attention to this and show all alerts for the entire region. Thus, we've lost portions of shows to a Tornado Warning or Flash Flood Warning for an area some 30 miles away from where we live. The coding in the EAS alert is designed to prevent this very thing from happening.

 

... since this afternoon, as far as I can tell?

I'm getting a "No need to call us, service will be restored as soon as technical difficulties are resolved. Please tune to your SD version of this channel" onscreen message.

Reboot to fix, maybe?

 

I wonder how many boxes D* will have to replace when they become doorstops? It's a test that's never-ever been performed before on a federal level in all the years EAS (formerly EBS) has existed. Has anyone ever seen one on D* before? I remember seeing them all over cable and OTA but can't remember seeing them on satellite before. I work in broadcasting and here the local EAS originator already has plans in place for killing it if the feds can't shut if off after the test.

 

I'm going to call D* and yell at a CSR about this test. haha

 

Was it supposed to happen already? I was watching TV and I had no alert at all.

 

Were you watching a recording or something live?

The channel I was tuned to (GSN) had it. DVR functionality was not affected, though, and I could watch pre-recorded shows while the test was ongoing (something you can't do with cable DVR's by the way).