The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has weighed in on a proposal made by tech developer SiliconDust that encourages NextGen TV broadcasters to remove their digital rights management (DRM) encryption features during a national test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) next month.
In a letter filed with the FCC this week, an attorney with the NAB said SiliconDust’s encouragement that broadcasters drop DRM features would create “artificial conditions that do not reflect how those stations would operate during an actual emergency.”
The test is meant to determine how emergency alert messages are transmitted by stations and received by viewers across all mediums, including the unencrypted broadcast standard widely used today and NextGen TV, which more local broadcast TV stations are adopting over time.
SiliconDust has long raised concerns about encrypted signals, saying they have the potential to prevent life-saving emergency alert messages from reaching viewers whose TVs cannot receive those stations.
SiliconDust’s own tuner, called HDHomeRun, works with NextGen TV but isn’t certified to decode encrypted stations. Proponents of the NextGen TV standard raised unfounded issues with SiliconDust’s choice of hardware for its tuners, saying their decision to install a chip made by China’s Huawei was a national security concern.
Other devices that are certified to receive encrypted signals contain hardware from China-based companies that have received similar scrutiny from federal regulators, according to schematics and internal components reviewed by The Desk and others. The difference between those devices and the HDHomeRun appears to be how signals are received by viewers — most of the certified devices with Chinese components connect directly to a TV, while SiliconDust’s tuner requires a separate streaming device like a Roku or Amazon Fire TV stick.
Until the situation is settled, HDHomeRun devices can’t decode encrypted signals, making emergency alert messages delivered by encrypted TV stations unavailable to viewers as well.
That could be a major problem for viewers with those tuners if NextGen TV backers, including the NAB, are successful in convincing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to wind down the current broadcast standard in favor of NextGen TV, with a proposed deadline of mid-2030 for all stations to complete the change.
In a regulatory filling earlier this month that was first reported by The Desk, SiliconDust President Nicholas Kelsey urged broadcasters to suspend their use of DRM technology during a one-week period that covers the EAS test, which is scheduled for November 10.
Kelsey said his company e-mailed local TV broadcasters like TEGNA to urge them to drop encryption technology so all viewers with NextGen TV tuners can receive the messages. He affirmed SiliconDust will evaluate encrypted and unencrypted signals during the test to determine if there are any issues with delivering EAS messages during the test.
In their response, the NAB said that scenario is exactly what the EAS test is meant to evaluate — how all stations, including encrypted NextGen TV outlets, deliver test messages to viewers, so broadcasters are prepared for actual emergencies.
“The (FCC) explained that the test should assess the EAS ‘from top-to-bottom,’ from origination of an alert through reception by the public, and should replicate actual national alert conditions as closely as possible,” the NAB said, echoing a statement made by the agency in 2011, before any NextGen TV stations had signed on.
The NAB also said SiliconDust’s concerns about the upcoming test were overblown because broadcasters currently maintain older ATSC 1.0 signals, and EAS test messages will be transmitted on the old and new standards alike.
The organization blamed SiliconDust for its “design choices” that rendered the HDHomeRun tuner unable to receive encrypted signals, deflecting any blame that broadcasters might face in the future if users of those devices aren’t able to receive emergency messages should the NextGen TV transition be approved.
“The overwhelming majority of (NextGen TV tuners) support content-protected programming, and viewers whose devices do not would ordinarily be tuned to services their devices can display,” the NAB said. “Temporarily disabling content protection to accommodate those receivers would only make the test less representative of the circumstances under which an actual alert would be broadcast.”
All commercial TV broadcasters are required by law to maintain equipment that can receive EAS messages from a carrier stations — typically an AM radio station in a given community — and transmit them on their digital signals.
