Digital Alert Systems and Triveni Digital have partnered to provide broadcasters with an ATSC 3.0 Advanced Emergency Alerting (AEA) "starter kit," intended as an introduction to the new emergency communications capabilities of the digital TV standard.
The starter kit combines the DASDEC emergency messaging platform and AEA Content Management from Digital Alert Systems with Triveni's GuideBuilder XM signaling and announcement generator, ROUTE/MMTP encoder, and a live source simulator. Offering support for EAS/CAP requirements, station multimedia, and first-responder communications, the starter kit is designed to enable broadcasters to deliver emergency alerts and auxiliary public safety information in both existing and future ATSC 3.0 environments.
Initially, the starter kit will enable delivery of CAP- and EAS-Net-formatted alerts to ATSC 3.0 receivers. Stations that already have a DASDEC unit will only need to update their software. Digital Alert Systems will provide additional software updates during the year to add support for the ATSC 3.0 AEA format to support more emergency communications functions.
The finalized ATSC 3.0 AEA messaging specification, proposed by Monroe Electronics as part of the ATSC A/331 next-generation digital television standard, will be incorporated in future DASDEC updates.
The kit is intended to let stations leverage their existing infrastructure as much as possible. The DASDEC AEA functionality combines EAS with general and custom messaging, content management of graphics and multimedia, geotargeted messaging, and multilingual support (including device-based translation of basic alert messages).
"This starter kit is the first solution for ATSC 3.0 AEA, enabling broadcasters to begin evaluating how best to implement next-generation AEA features to benefit their local audiences, with an eye towards reaching both stationary TVs and mobile receivers," said Ed Czarnecki, senior director, strategic and government affairs at Digital Alert Systems. "By collaborating with technology leaders like Triveni Digital, we can offer broadcasters a complete ATSC 3.0 solution for AEA for a smoother transition to the new digital television standard."
Digital Alert Systems and Triveni Digital will demonstrate the starter kit at the 2017 NAB Show.
In other Triveni news, the company's GuideBuilder XM signaling and announcement generator and StreamScope XM MT platforms now support the MMTP protocol, providing tools to ease broadcaster adoption of ATSC 3.0 standards It supports ATSC 3.0 ROUTE (Real-Time Object Delivery over Unidirectional Transport) and MMTP (MPEG Media Transport Protocol) encoding options to manage IP broadcast data and perform analysis of ATSC 3.0 streams and data structures. Triveni will demonstrate the upgrades at the 2017 NAB Show in Las Vegas.
"The ATSC 3.0 standard defines two protocol paths in the broadcast infrastructure: ROUTE for delivery of all data streams, including essence streams (audio, video, and captioning) and MMTP for essence streams only," said Ralph Bachofen, vice president of sales and marketing at Triveni Digital. "Given the complexity and extent of the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards, it is more important than ever for broadcasters to have robust tools like StreamScope XM MT, that are easy to use and highly visual to simplify troubleshooting and analysis. Since GuideBuilder XM is built upon the widely deployed and robust GuideBuilder platform, broadcasters can confidently build next-gen TV as a coherent extension of their current infrastructure."