EAS (Emergency Alert System)

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ajohnson1

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EAS (Emergency Alert System)

#1

Post by ajohnson1 » Tue Sep 25, 2012 3:33 am

WMC has some really annoying emergency message handling. Not only is it obtrusive to the viewing area, but it removes the time bar from the bottom while fast-forwarding and rewinding.

The only way to get rid of the message is to close WMC and open it back up. This is an annoying work-around, and the message will eventually just come back up anyway.

From what I've read on other forums, there's no solution for this. If I could just find a way to make the background transparent, I would be very happy. If I could disable them altogether, I would be even happier. Are there any programmers that might have some insight? Or perhaps someone knows of a registry edit for this?

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tad

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#2

Post by tad » Tue Sep 25, 2012 6:52 pm

Interesting. I've used media center for all my TV viewing since 2006 and I have never seen an emergency alert broadcast like this.

bmblank

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#3

Post by bmblank » Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:07 pm

Nor have I.

barnabas1969

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#4

Post by barnabas1969 » Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:55 pm

I have seen it once in the year and a half that I've been using Media Center. There's nothing you can do about it that I've found. Fortunately, it doesn't get recorded onto your scheduled recordings (unlike the crappy DVR from my cable company).

lithium630

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#5

Post by lithium630 » Tue Sep 25, 2012 11:59 pm

I've seen it a few times. I agree it is really annoying. It takes a long time to go away.

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#6

Post by UCBearcat » Wed Sep 26, 2012 12:07 am

I've seen it about 3 times in the 8 months that I've been using WMC7. Whenever there is severe weather, it shows up... nothing you can do other than wait it out. And sometimes, it won't go away at the designated time it states. In my case, I had to close the extender and re-open.

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#7

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:29 pm

To be honest, I don't think there was a way to make it go away on the DVR from the cable company either. It would be nice if there was a way to acknowledge the message, but I don't expect that to ever happen.

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#8

Post by richard1980 » Thu Sep 27, 2012 12:49 am

I think it depends on the DVR. I've seen some people post that they can dismiss the messages on the cable box.

barnabas1969

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#9

Post by barnabas1969 » Thu Sep 27, 2012 1:53 pm

richard1980 wrote:I think it depends on the DVR. I've seen some people post that they can dismiss the messages on the cable box.
I've seen people post that too, but it wasn't my experience. It's a nice idea though.

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ajohnson1

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#10

Post by ajohnson1 » Thu Sep 27, 2012 4:21 pm

On my Comcast-issued DVR, the same message pops up every 30 minutes or so. But it just scrolls through once and then disappears.

On WMC, it never gets dismissed until I close WMC.

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#11

Post by xelrash » Thu Oct 11, 2012 2:14 pm

I too have been using media center since 2008 and hav enever seen that. I would love to have that as an option.

snoop168

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#12

Post by snoop168 » Fri Dec 21, 2012 2:58 am

Looking at other forum posts, this still seems to be an issue. Has anyone contacted and received a response from microsoft regarding this? Obviously the cable companies need to keep transmitting the alert as long as its active because someone might not have their TV turned on when it first gets issued, however a simple acknowledge button would be great or just a 2 minute timer like others have said... Or it could flash it up every 5 minutes but to have it there constantly is terrible...

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#13

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Dec 21, 2012 4:30 am

snoop168 wrote:Looking at other forum posts, this still seems to be an issue. Has anyone contacted and received a response from microsoft regarding this? Obviously the cable companies need to keep transmitting the alert as long as its active because someone might not have their TV turned on when it first gets issued, however a simple acknowledge button would be great or just a 2 minute timer like others have said... Or it could flash it up every 5 minutes but to have it there constantly is terrible...
Yeah, good luck with getting Microsoft to do anything for you. Microsoft won't help you any further than their India-based, scripted "customer support" people can go... and since it's Media Center... you're just on your own.

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#14

Post by dalethefarmer » Wed Dec 26, 2012 5:52 pm

I just moved out of the city and I started seeing these messages pop up every other day. I haven't found a way to turn them off completely but I was able to make the bar transparent: I used Media Center Studio and edited the image TV.INFOBAR.BACKGROUNDLONG.PNG. This is under Other when you open the theme for editing.

If you don't have MC Studio, look it up as I don't really mess with it and not in tune with the latest on that application. Hope this helps someone.

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#15

Post by Crewski » Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:27 am

I watch my TV mainly through an xbox as an extender (not sure if that makes a difference). I've been having an issue lately where the EAS pops up and just says "End of Message". When this happens, the live TV feed stops playing. Only way I've found to fix it is reboot the xbox and re-intiate the extender session. Anyone know what going on with this or how to fix it? I'm in Cincinnati on Time Warner Cable.

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#16

Post by jziggity » Wed Jan 02, 2013 3:48 pm

How do I get rid of this?! Our area (SE Wisconsin) had its monthly National Weather Service test today, and it is interfering with my media center setup. See the attached screen shot for the ticker I am referring to. It won't go away! I am running Win 7 and using 2 XBox's as media extenders. On the XBox, it completely prevents me from doing anything - I can't watch live or recorded TV. If I reset the XBox, I get about a minute of live TV and then the screen goes blank with the constantly scrolling NWS notice. On the PC itself, the scrolling ticker is constantly there, but I can still use WMC as normal. I am assuming this is all set up by Time Warner Cable? It just keeps scrolling the list of counties and the effective time. Just in case I'm missing it, Is there an internal WMC setting that I can use to turn this off?

EDIT: A reset of the PC and the XBox's has failed to get rid of the scroll bar. Hooray, I just LOVE calling TWC...

[Moderator note: topic merged; please search before posing]
Attachments
Weather Test.jpg
NWS Scroll Bar

jziggity

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#17

Post by jziggity » Wed Jan 02, 2013 6:08 pm

My apologies to the moderator for starting a new thread. I was searching on NWS and National Weather Service, instead of EAS. In my case, I spent some time on the phone with TWC tech support. They tried, and had me try, everything they could think of. When I told them what the problem was, they immediately knew what I was talking about, and acknowledged it is an issue for STB users as well. The last suggestion from them that worked for me was shutting everything completely down, computer, extenders, everything, for about an hour. After I powered everything back up, it was gone, and didn't come back. Previously simple reboots were not getting rid of it - it would just come back after a couple of minutes. In my case, I don't know if it was the actual "down time" of my system that did the trick, or it just happened to time out on its own during that hour time frame, or maybe a little bit of both.

Had the shutdown period not worked, TWC's next option was a truck roll, which I'm glad I (narrowly) avoided.

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#18

Post by jplong » Wed Jan 02, 2013 8:14 pm

Crewski wrote:I watch my TV mainly through an xbox as an extender (not sure if that makes a difference). I've been having an issue lately where the EAS pops up and just says "End of Message". When this happens, the live TV feed stops playing. Only way I've found to fix it is reboot the xbox and re-intiate the extender session. Anyone know what going on with this or how to fix it? I'm in Cincinnati on Time Warner Cable.
Crewski,
I live in Mainville and get the exact same thing.

Crewski

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#19

Post by Crewski » Sat Jan 05, 2013 5:04 pm

jplong wrote: Crewski,
I live in Mainville and get the exact same thing.
Guess its a TWC Cincinnati area thing (I'm in Liberty Twp). Just another item to add the the list of why I despise TWC.

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#20

Post by snoop168 » Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:25 am

does anyone know if there is a way to strip the EAS messages out from a HD Homerun Prime feed??

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