Sharing a hot lunch with colleagues seems fitting during the holiday season, so we hope you can join us Wednesday, December 10 at noon for lunch, chatter, and…

A Few Words from an EAS Master

Last year, the FCC issued a Report and Order on EAS requiring, among other things, that broadcasters "must be able to receive CAP formatted EAS alerts no later than 180 days after FEMA publishes the technical standards and requirements for such FEMA transmissions".  In July of this year FEMA announced its intention to do so during the first quarter of 2009.

Harold Price of Sage Alerting Systems will present a discussion of what that means, and describe the new Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) requirements for broadcasters. Harold was the lead designer for the original Sage ENDEC and for the new Sage Digital ENDEC.

Join us, won’t you? Wednesday, December 10, 12 noon at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road, in Kearny Mesa, San Diego. We’ll have real banquet tables and a real holiday meal provided by SCMS. Please reserve now your spot at the table. Call or write Doug Tharp, (818) 398-7314, or dougt@scmsinc.com.

Door prizes include an HD radio and professional microphone.

While you weren’t looking, your audio and video media hard drive technology has gone through a quiet revolution. No longer are we striping arrays of SCSI drives to compensate for balky seek times and bus limits. SCSI and RAID technologies have gone virtual. If you’re like me, you may have taken a lot of this for granted. Our November meeting presentation by Rorke Data sorts out what’s going on with today’s spinning disk and linear tape data storage media.

Rorke Data specializes in broadcast media, and you’ll find their products in many of the systems sold by automation and software companies. Look for engineer Todd Dahlgren to cover: RAID 6, cluster file systems, iSCSI, InfiniBand, the continuing role of linear tape open (LTO) long-term storage, and even optical storage. Todd and representative Teresa McPherson will answer questions about their full storage line.

Join us for this lunch ‘n’ learn meeting Wednesday, November 19, at noon, at TV Magic in Kearny Mesa. Rorke buys lunch. As always, members and guests are welcome. We should be finished by 1:30.

Classic RF measurement leader Bird Technologies pays us a visit October 15 at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa, at noon. Members and guests are welcome to join us for a free lunch and technical presentation.

Visiting Bird Technologies Applications Engineer Lynn Strube will discuss RF power measurement basics, and why the measurements are important, transmitter power measurement methods, RF power measurement traceability and why analog and digital TV measurements are done differently. Don Scanlon will join her to describe their new transmitter power monitor (TPM) products and their SignalHawk spectrum analyzer.

Bird has been a supplier of RF measuring equipment for more than 60 years and they supply to broadcast, semiconductor processing, military, medical equipment and many other markets. Lynn has been in the broadcast industry for more than 35 years.

Due to the complexity of the ATSC Transport Stream, broadcasters can find ourselves out of compliance. Some errors, while violations of the standards, do not produce degraded quality for the viewer. When even minor errors frequently trigger broadcasters’ alarms for inconsequential problems, important alarms often go ignored. The A/78 Recommended Practice was designed to address this problem. It develops a system of triage amongst the error types, ranging from unwatchable to invisible. By monitoring through devices that employ A/78, broadcasters can be assured of being quickly informed of any problems that will impact video quality.

Join San Diego SBE Chapter 36 for its regular monthly meeting Wednesday, September 17 at noon at Bay City Television, 8253 Ronson Road in Kearny Mesa. Triveni buys lunch. Expect the presentation to last till 1:30 PM. As always, guests are welcome.

About Richard Chernock

Dr. Chernock, the author of A/78 and Director of Technology at Triveni Digital, develops strategic directions for metadata management, content distribution and monitoring for emerging digital television systems. Previously, he was a Research Staff Member at IBM Research, investigating digital broadcast technologies. Dr. Chernock is active in a number of the ATSC and SCTE standards committees, particularly in the areas of metadata, monitoring and data broadcast. He is a participant in the SCTE HMS activity. He chairs a number of ad hoc committees within ATSC whose work relates to metadata and transport issues. He is vice-chair of the Technology Group on Distribution (TSG) and chairing the Non-Real-Time Services and Mobile/Handheld management layer activities within ATSC. In another life, he used transmission electron microscopy to study materials characteristics for advanced ceramics packaging and semiconductor technology at IBM. His ScD was from MIT in the field of nuclear materials engineering.

When you get 30 engineers show up for a radio-themed meeting as we had in August, you can get cocky enough to call for two meetings in one month. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing in September. Our second presentation this month is by Jeff Welton of Nautel, the broadcast radio transmitter guys. TV Magic will host the meeting at noon, Thursday, September 25. Jeff will buy you lunch. TV Magic is at 8112 Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa. Expect the presentation to last to near 1:30 PM.

About the Meeting

The proposed 10dB increase to digital sideband power levels for stations broadcasting with HD Radio(tm) technology in the FM band will have significant impact on equipment and infrastructure requirements. Even if the sideband power were to increase by a lesser amount, the effect will be much more serious than many have realized. This presentation will cover the increase and the associated changes that may be required with various methods of injecting the HD radio signal onto the analog. In addition it will cover technology that has been implemented, or is being developed, to assist stations in achieving the highest possible signal level increase with the least possible impact.

About Jeff Welton

Jeff Welton is a graduate of the Electronics Engineering Technician and Technologist programs at RCC Institute of Electronics (formerly Radio College of Canada) in Ontario, Canada. He has worked in electronics repair, installation, quality assurance and manufacturing since 1985. In 1990, he joined Nautel in the Customer Service Department. Then in March 2007, Jeff accepted a position with Nautel’s Sales Department, where he has been able to use his technical background to help customers find the best possible solutions for their particular requirements.

About Nautel

Nautel is a global leader in the design, manufacture, sales and support of high power Radio Frequency (RF) products for AM and FM broadcast, navigation, industrial and space-based applications.  With a long history of creating highly innovative products, Nautel continues to lead the way in providing valuable new solutions for the digital radio broadcast revolution.