Compix EAS and the CAP Solutions

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) in the US has been in place since the mid 1990’s, which replaced the Emergency Broadcast System, or the EBS. The purpose of these emergency alert systems is to allow local broadcast radio and TV stations to transmit emergency messages from various local, state and national government agencies to the nation’s listeners and viewers.

Recently the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been working to update the EAS system with a more complete and modern messaging system, the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), and has now released working standards and protocols for this updated system. The new system includes the ability for communications companies to receive emergency alerts over the internet, new methods to include these messages in new media applications, and also includes additional capabilities for multi-lingual alerts and to add video images to the messages.

We have all heard the “duck quack” signals that come with these alerts, sometimes they are just tests, and other times they are actual emergency alerts for weather related  warnings, Amber alerts, and other local and regional messages.

While the new FCC rules and regulations are in the process of being set, television and radio EAS equipment manufacturers have been keeping up with the requirements as they become more certain, and are in the process or already offer equipment to meet the federal guidelines for these new CAP requirements

Compix has been working with leading manufacturers of EAS and CAP compliant equipment to provide cost effective and reliable character generator solutions for television broadcasters looking for the next generation of easy to use EAS and CAP compliant products.

  One of these products is the Compix ChannelBrander™. This brings your channel to life with great features to keep your audience tuned in. Included is the ability to create continuous streams of automatically updated informational tickers and crawls, weather conditions, plus EAS and CAP emergency alerts. ChannelBrander uses embedded smart technology to offer powerful channel branding and affordable creation of interactive, informational headline feeds.

With added tools for creating graphics, such as customized lower-thirds, broadcasters can also easily monetize the on-screen space and increase viewer loyalty.

With flexible options for putting targeted and personalized content on-screen, users can add crawls, logos, and more – all on a single channel system. ChannelBrander enables simultaneous display of two independent crawls that automatically draw data from text files updated manually or automatically.  Users can go also go to news, sports, weather, and financial data websites to link RSS feeds with the ChannelBrander. Every ChannelBrander features broadcast ready requirements like preset “power up ready state” and includes an active bypass relay.

For more information on Compix solutions for your current and future EAS and CAP requirements, please contact us at sales@compix.tv for more information about your particular configuration and requirements. Till next time!

After NAB 2011

Wow, another huge NAB convention in Las Vegas has come and gone! With thousands of vendors showing their products, and tens of thousands of customers viewing them, it is the biggest meeting and collection of television and video professionals in the world. Trends this year look pretty much on track with where our industry has been heading for the last several years. Here are a couple of quick snapshots of some of them.

Stereo 3DTV took more of a back seat on the show floor, and while there are more products and services dedicated to creating and distributing this format of viewing material, there did seem to be a much smaller sampling of vendors leading with 3D as “the big thing” right now. Lighter and smaller glasses for viewing 3D screens and screens with wider viewing angles, but it still looks like most of us are waiting to see “no glasses required” displays before we are going to buy into 3D in a big way. These displays may still be a year or two down the road before they reach the consumer level of affordability.

Mobile TV in the US is moving ahead at a steady pace, with more and more broadcasters embracing different methods and technologies to get handheld TV and mobile content anywhere into the hands of people everywhere. This is the next step for broadcast companies to keep their traditional viewers tuned in to their content and advertisers.

Cloud computing with file sharing, storage, manipulation and distribution is another big buzz this year and the industry is still searching for business models and bandwidth to catch up to the hype, while back down here on the ground there are a lot of changes going on in traditional workflows and solutions.

Big changes in traditional video production product configurations and pricing are really starting to affect this industry – forever. Integrated solutions, or “television stations in a box”, are now being offered by more and more companies, with video switchers, multi-viewers, servers and graphics all included in a single platform. (See my 3/14/11 blog entitled “One Size Fits All” for some thoughts on some the good and bad points with these solutions.) There is no doubt that this decades mantra for content creation and distribution will be “a lot more for a lot less,” and this year’s NAB really showed this to be truer than ever.

On that note, at Compix we have introduced our next generation graphics platform called Persona, and as always with Compix products, its benefits include advanced features, ease of use, and pricing that bring a new level of CG to the market at an unbelievable price point.   With up to 6 virtual overlays in a single channel of output, 2D/3D object creation and import, timeline effects, clip support and more, Persona sets a new level of expectation for the standalone CG market. More information, including promos, show reels and brochures can be seen here on our web site. As always we are ready to help answer your questions about any of our products, and provide you with the service that Compix is famous for. More on Compix Persona next time!

The ROI Promise

A Real Return On Investment?

The “Return On Investment” promise, as understood by most of us, means if an end user spends money on a capital investment now, then, over time, the savings in operating expenses – thanks to better, smarter, and/or cheaper technology – will pay back the initial outlay of capital. This idea has fueled many industries since the beginning of time, but sometimes it may not be the whole truth.

When companies put together their ROI proposals, they aren’t trying to mislead; they can be telling the truth in the most attractive way. Projects are designed to suggest that clear lines separating professional, “prosumer”, and consumer technologies still exist. This can justify the higher cost of traditional professional systems. In reality, there has been an amazing sea change. Now, anyone can get a hold of the same technologies used by professionals — by picking up Final Cut Pro and Garage Band at the local electronics store — and give production a try.

The proposed ROI solution will usually make perfect sense on paper.  The design features a TV facility, post-production house, radio facility, A/V system in a house of worship, or a similar production environment. Putting together a one-sheet, the provider wraps select technology around its product and projects that in some number of years, the solution will enable the buyer to make back the initial investment. This claim in turn leads to the idea that the product will eventually wind up being free, or even contribute to the facility’s revenue stream. The promise suggests the resulting reliability and performance will eliminate costly down time or lost connectivity, thereby saving the facility even more money.

Sometimes, however, the fundamental flaw with this line of reasoning is that the provider builds the ROI argument inside a world where products exist on separate islands, and are surrounded only by complementary systems that work and communicate well with each other. But in the real world, products often have to work with legacy equipment, and then put new technology on top of it.

The ROI promise assumes that the new products going to these islands will operate without a hitch to external systems, but what really happens is that brand-new systems get put into the middle of existing plants. By necessity, new equipment and technologies are mixed with old. This is the nature of product development and deployment. By the time a technology has been widely deployed, the industry needs to come up with new standards that require the purchase of new systems. This migration from standard to standard is reflected in the shift from black and white television in the ’30s, to color in the ‘60s, digital in the ‘80s, and now our transition to HD, 3G, and 3D!

If It Is Too Good To Be True…

Technology doesn’t live in a vacuum; it follows the lead of designers, installers, and end users. Technology may affect how people behave, but, in and of itself, it doesn’t change human behavior. Humans resist change and will operate new technology in the same way they used old technology. Occurring along with the slow evolution of human behavior, the cycle of evolving standards and technologies makes it necessary for most facilities to integrate new technologies with existing systems. Together, these factors can make the ROI promise into the ROI compromise. While moving ahead is, of course, usually a good thing, if a promise seems too good to be true, then maybe the underlying compromises will require a much closer look.