A company known for its media industry emergency communications technology has forged a new technology partnership with the distributor and manufacturer of the XOS Advanced Media Processor.
This will bring to fruition an integration that makes it possible for video distributors that use both companies’ systems — whether operating in ATSC 1.0, ATSC 3.0 or both environments — to include emergency information in their programming in the most efficient manner.
The agreement between Digital Alert Systems and Harmonic will see DAS’s DASDEC Flexible Emergency Messaging Platform and its EAS-Net communications interface integrate with Harmonic’s XOS.
By combining the market-leading Harmonic XOS Advanced Media Processor with Digital Alert Systems’ DASDEC with EAS-Net, customers can provide emergency alerting information — including text crawls and audio — using a single IP communications connection.
This eliminates the need for one or more separate media keyers, switchers, and a host of individual cables and connectors, or the need to use the highly unpopular full-screen replacement.
As the DASDEC is IP-based, it can be placed in a remote market and network-connected directly to the Harmonic XOS processor.
The EAS-Net communication protocol also includes flexible event scheduling, simultaneous multistation alerts, and multilingual support. Additionally, it features expansion options like EAS-Net AEA, which supports the Advanced Emergency Information (AEI) elements in the ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) standard. This means the same equipment supports both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 standards and future developments.
The Harmonic/Digital Alert Systems solution has made it possible for Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns, operates, and/or services 185 television stations in 86 markets, to test and demo the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and AEI for ATSC 3.0.
“Linking Harmonic’s XOS Advanced Media Processor and Digital Alert Systems’ DASDEC with EAS-Net provides a direct IP connection for emergency alerting, including text crawls and audio, across multiple streams in both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 environments at minimum cost and fewer points of failure,” said Mark Aitken, SVP of Advanced Technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group and President of ONE Media 3.0 LLC. “Further, EAS-Net enables Advanced Emergency Information routing, an essential broadcast core network function. This aligns perfectly with Sinclair’s mission to create and deploy a resilient and connected NextGen broadcast network for our NextGenTV experience.”
