DTV America Begins Rollout of DAS EAS/CAP Units at LPTV Sites

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y. —Digital Alert Systems, a division of Monroe Electronics, announced that DTV America is deploying DASDEC-II emergency messaging platforms at low-power TV sites across the United States. DTV America holds LPTV licenses in 80 markets, and it is rolling out the DAS units to realize technically advanced EAS/CAP capabilities while ensuring reliable centralized control of EAS units installed across DTV America sites.

After finding that the devices first installed in its initial EAS/CAP deployments could neither provide an MPEG output nor support IP-based message aggregation, DTV America shifted gears and sought out a new EAS/CAP solution. The company then evaluated, purchased, and began deploying the DASDEC-II LPTV decoder with built-in radios and integrated MPEG encoding online, and has plans for integrating this technology in multiple markets through 2015.

The network-centric DASLPTVR integrates three key features — monitoring radios, EAS decoder, and CAP decoder — into a single 2 RU box with a with a secure browser-based interface and an architecture that supports simultaneous monitoring and user access with tiered security. The system’s internal triple tri-band (AM/FM/WX) high-performance receivers are fully adjustable via the web-browser user interface, and its optional four independent Ethernet ports enhance network performance by splitting network traffic among the ports. By presenting EAS text and audio as an MPEG stream for direct insertion into digital broadcast streams, the internal MPEG encoding option saves DTV America and others money and reduces the complexity of EAS/CAP compliance operations.