[EAS] Multilingual support for CAP messages

[Sean Donelan]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2016, Adrienne Abbott wrote:
> What's the best way to serve our tourist communities? The hotels provide TV
> programming in multiple languages on their internal cable channels. How can
> we get the hotel systems EAS information in those languages? I hate to say
> it, but I don't even know how the hotel TV systems here handle EAS
> activations. The hotel security centers have EAS equipment and
> communications systems to reach guests on the casino floor and in the
> restaurants as well as in the hotel rooms.

The Las Vegas hospitality industry is different than everywhere else. The
Las Vegas casino spending on security is above average, and that tends
to help with ancillary property security capabilities.

In the rest of the country, hotel TV systems are usually SMATV or 
private cable systems.  The hotel "security center" is the front desk
person overnight.  Although modern SMATV equipment can insert EAS, 
generally hotels don't install any local EAS capabilities beyond whatever 
comes via the satellite or local cable supplier.  These days, Internet is 
more important to the hospitality industry than television, and hotels
aren't likely to spend more than necessary.  Lodgenet went bankrupt.
The cable/satellite companies are really competiting for hotels' 
internet/wifi business rather than their television business.

On the other hand, university campuses and military bases have been adding 
EAS/mass notification systems to their SMATV/PCO systems.

When I worked at DHS, the DHS in-house satellite TV network didn't
include local EAS.  I bought a weather radio for my office at DHS after
the deracho in Washington, DC.