Distress Signal Emitted By Flat-Screen TV

pinqkandi writes "CNN is a running a story on an Oregon college student's flat-screen Toshiba TV which was releasing the 121.5 MHz international distress signal. He was unaware of the issue until local police, search and rescue, and civil air patrol members showed up at his apartment's door. Apparently the signal was strong enough to be picked up by satellite and then routed to the Air Force Rescue Center in Virginia. Quite impressive - luckily Toshiba is offering him a free replacement."

Must have been quite powerful

[metlin]

I'd originally read this on CNet [com.com] a while ago.

And the (CNet) article points out something of relevance - with so many new devices and what not, our radio spectrum is increasingly becoming very muddled and interference a lot more commonplace. I wonder if existing regulations would do, or if new ones be required.

Something to think about.

And I wonder how powerful that signal must have been to have caused such interference. Either that, or the receiving satellites must be having one hell of a resolution capability.

The latter also provides some food for thought - if their satellite equipment is sensitive enough to find out interfering signals from a Television set, wonder what else they can (and do) eavesdrop :)

What kind of Tempest attacks [wikipedia.org] do take place, I wonder. Satellite Van Eck Phreaking?

~adjusts tinfoil hat~

Re:Must have been quite powerful

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the entire point of this particular satellite is to save peoples' lives. Good try, though.

Re:Must have been quite powerful

[jZnat]

The FCC does regulate the airwaves in America, but they can't catch everything (thankfully). It does seem odd though that a friggin TV would let off a strong enough signal to even reach a satellite, let alone it being 121.5 MHz exactly. Something about that raises some questions, like if the TV was tampered with or if it was even intentionally done to do so.

Re:Must have been quite powerful

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if existing regulations would do,...

Yes, given that this happens fairly rarely.

And I wonder how powerful that signal must have been to have caused such interference.

Not very. Nothing uses the emergency frequency so the background is quiet. The transmitters are designed to run from battery power for days, and be detectable even from inside a smashed airplane, so the receivers are very sensitive.

Re:EMI testing is a bitch.

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be nice to have the choice of saying "this passes" vs "this probably passes".

And how convenient it would be for whole industries to shut down while your 10,000 defective widgets are tracked down and confiscated.

Current FCC/CE regs require everyone to meet the spec, and this is a bit onerous IMHO. It locks some innovative small companies out of the game.

If you can't afford the equivalent of a couple of weeks of engineer's salary, which is all that a round of EMI compliance testing costs, then you aren't in "the game".

Re:EMI testing is a bitch.

[metlin]

The problem is that while in your particular instance it may seem stiffling to your company, those regulations are in place because not all companies can be trusted to stick with the specs in that case.

It becomes a question of business ethics, and we all know how most companies are when it comes to those. This device probably passes the test, where probably has a probability of 0.00001.

_That_ is why strict regulations are needed, IMHO.

And oh btw, nice players at Slim Devices, quite the coolness.

Error on the side of caution is great!

[Smoodo]

I'm certainly glad that it was detected and responded to. I hope the spectrum doesn't get too messy and create this situation often, but it does show that someone is paying attention when there is a cry for help. (Thinking out in the ocean here).

Re:I bet he was hacking Dishnetwork...

[ricochet81]

college student (no money)??

the dude has a flat screen TV doesnt he?!

Re:EMI testing is a bitch.

[ckaminski]

I don't when that radio noise could be coming from the apartment a half-block away from the machine keeping me alive in the hospital.

No thanks. ;-)

Re:Must have been quite powerful

[Lord Kano]

If the technology that they have let us know about is able to pick up a signal generated by a plasma TV, I really wonder what they're keeping under their hats.

Most of us only half-believe the stories about echelon and massive gov't surveillance but things like this tell me that our fears may be more reasonable than we think.

LK

Re:In other news...

[conway]

It was a DeLorean coupe [google.com] - it only had 2 doors.
Can't believe someone on /. would get this wrong! :)

Say what?!?

[A nonymous Coward]

The reason for non-interference isn't to protect the manufacturer, it's to protect the public. What the holy blue devil makes you think this burden should be waived for small companies?

Let's carry that concept on thru .... I'll start up a gas station, and since I'm a small company, I can dispense with all those silly safety regs. I'll put stickers on the pumps "You should probably not smoke around here."

Or I can start selling homemade cars, put in some cheap airbags made of a CO2 cartridge and a mousetrap on a hairspring for a trigger, along with a "probably works" disclaimer. That should do the trick.

Geez buddy, get a grip!

Something to keep in mind

[Raul654]

Just a little something to keep in mind - all it takes is one (faulty) popular model putting out EMI interference to fuck up an entire range of the spectrum into unusability. So yes, I STRONGLY support keeping tight screws on EMI interference, because you can't rely on Corps to be ethical and act responsibly if it weren't legally mandated. And, as the Netgear NTP issue so eloquently demonstrates, even after you tell a company that they are doing harm and need to stop, they might not necessarily do it.

Re:Fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well this happened to my set also when I was a kid. The signal was audio tho. After a while we figured out my kid sister had somehow got inside the TV. Long story short, some midget lady came over and pulled her out somehow and she was full of buggers. So we dunked her in the tub. Anyway, the whole house imploded and we moved to a high-rise apartment where troubles soon followed.

Re:Must have been quite powerful

[cheekyboy]

Thats why all top secret spy shit should be done on a ski field off piste in the middle of no where so NO ONE can hear you or know your there.

If you want to 'talk' in your room, just use an ethysketch or getsmarts cone of silence.

Why? I can trigger the alarm for an other distress

[SmallFurryCreature]

Just because the alarm is put in a boat doesn't mean it has be to be activated for a boating accident.

Why do you think they currently react to "emergencies" like this leaking tv? Because if they don't someone could die.

Rescue services have to respond to every call even if they know it is false. Because if they guess wrong peoples life are at stake.

They also can't just send a clerk on a moped to find out because if it is real that would loose time.

It says a lot about politicians that in these days of cutbacks no-one is doing anything to cut down on the money wasted by deliberate false emergcengy calls. Send the kids to a few months of re-education. Post 9/11 it should be easy to label them as the terrorists they are.

And no I never made a crank emergency call as a kid. There are just somethings you don't do.

Re:Sorry, but you are totally clueless.

[metlin]

You are an idiot.

And the competitors in India and China don't have this certification rubbish.

Any and all electrical and electronic equipment in the US is subject to regulations, whether they are manufactured inhouse or imported - to prevent unwanted and potentially harmful interference.

bureaucratic goverment drones like you impose a mountain of useless paperwork on small businesses.

I happen to be the owner of a small business myself, and I find the regulations to be quite useful and justified, they're the reasons we do not have a million conflicting parts and standards out there.

But a small business is killed by such stuff.

Yes, and people are killed if there were no regulations. Would you rather have someone die because an CD-player interfered with their pacemaker interfered, or would you rather help small businesses "prosper".

Btw, the reason China is providing cheap stuff is because they have little or no laws on labour condition and blatantly practice harmful trade practices like under-pricing. I guess if we could make you work in a sweatshop for 20 hours a day for a pittance, you would be happy?

Get your facts straight before talking through your ass.

Re:TWC is not a monopoly

[Zebbers]

Hey guess what...when I don't get to CHOOSE which cable company to use, then you are a monopoly.

Re:TWC is not a monopoly

[hab136]

Also, don't blame your local cable company if the industry compitition does not want to compete with us through laying down their own network in your area. In fact, legally...you are not guarantied to even have cable TV service, unlike phone service.

Most cities contract with one cable provider and PROHIBIT other providers from laying cable. Thus, a monopoly.

We're not guaranteed cable, true, but that doesn't change the fact that cable is a monopoly in most cities in the US.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Dodgy TV software?

[FLEB]

Meanwhile... IT'S A FREAKING TELEVISION! "TV" and "crash" should not be sharing the same sentence.

Re:Actually

[operagost]

Only on Slashdot is this modded insightful.

Fox News is more popular than CNN and MSNBC combined. How do you explain that? Oh, that's right - here on Slashdot we are the master ra- I mean intellectual elite, and are much smarter than the unwashed masses.

Please give me an example of "fiction" provided by Fox News. Or how about just biased reporting. I'll give you one I got in just 10 minutes watching CNN - a Democratic pundit claimed that Bush had no hope of winning New Jersey. Meanwhile, the last poll I saw had Kerry leading by only four points with the margin of error being 3.4 (USA Today). Paula Zahn did not challenge his assertion.

Re:Actually

[flatface]

How about an entire documentary? [outfoxed.org]

Download it [66.90.75.92] (bt) if you're too cheap/lazy to buy it.

Re:TWC is not a monopoly

[quisph]

4. Interactive content. Imagine watching a game show where the viewers get to vote with a remote control. This is not done yet, but the technology is in place.

Er... My analog cable could do that as far back as 1982. It never really caught on, but it was there, and it worked.

Re:Actually

[danbeck]

Oh, good point. You can always trust a documentary [fahrenheit911.com], no matter who [michaelmoore.com] makes it, or what agenda they might have.

Remember slashdot kids, if it's on TV on in your local movie theater, it's got to be true, right? Honestly, I think most people here just tow the slashdot-party line, if you take my meaning. It's just popular to bash Fox News, because, heaven forbid, they might have intelligently voiced conservative viewpoints along with the intelligently voiced liberal viewpoints IN THE SAME SHOW!

Re:Actually

[AyeRoxor!]

Fox News is more popular than CNN and MSNBC combined.

You should watch So I Married An Axe Murderer [imdb.com] some day, when you aren't so deluded.

May Mackenzie: Charlie, hand me the paper.
Charlie Mackenzie: Mom, I find it interesting that you call The Weekly World News "the paper." A paper contains facts.
Stuart Mackenzie: Hey! The Weekly World News has the most readers of ANY newspaper on the planet! You're going to say that's coincidence?

"People watch/read it, so it's right" has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever read. I'm actually embarassed for you.

Re:Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess. You are part of the 65% of Americans who STILL think Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Fox news is a total joke. The only sad part, is how many Americans actually take their world view from Fox's reporting. You may like it, because they wrap every segment in a flag, an spout off about patriotism at every turn. The rest of the world watches it, and just laugh at how uninformed Fox really is. To put it in perspective for you, imagine listening to opinions from a foriegn country, both leadership, and populace, where all of their opinions, and policy decisions were backed with quotes from the Weekly World News. That is how off target Fox is.

The funniest part of course, is you are being fed your daily propaganda by an Aussie loon!

Re:Actually

[el_gordo101]

Remember slashdot kids, if it's on TV on in your local movie theater, it's got to be true, right?

Fox news is on TV too, correct? Ergo, it must be true too. Or is my logic a bit faulty here? The bottom line is that all of these outlets have an agenda. It is up to the individual to watch, listen, read, and them make an informed desicion. Unfortunately, here in the US, most people wait to be told what their position should be.

Re:TWC is not a monopoly

[payslee]

Most places prohibit this for a reason, not just caprice. Cables are buried under the streets. If you had five local cable companies instead of one, then you have five times as many street-digging projects and five times as many patched-over paving jobs.

Assuming you have enough competition, some of those companies will go under and leave your city or town with this mess on their hands.

Not sating I think this is a *good* reason, but I keep my TV to that "off" channel anyway

Re:The relationship of 121.5 Mhz to NTSC video

[Anonymous Coward]

The horizontal sweep theory is nice... Except that it's a PLASMA TELEVISION. Plasma and other non-CRT devices have no need for magnetic deflection. :)

Discredited as urban legend

[Anonymous Coward]

All of these tales have been discredited as urban legends.

Re:Actually

[danbeck]

No, I never said that Fox News was the ultimate source of authority over any factual information. I simply pointed out to the original poster that the existence of dissenting information doesn't make one or the other more or less valid.

I agree with your last statement though, my grief has always been that the majority of the people here at slashdot tend to just ride the bandwagon. It's popular to hate Bush|Ashcroft|Fox News|both major presidential parties|Religious people|Microsoft and the list goes on. I doubt few people could make real cogent arguments for their hatred of any of those things without calling names like school children. The simple fact that it tends to be fueled by hatred makes it's almost impossible.

Just Wait Till . . .

[T_O_M]

Just wait till BPL (Broadband Over Powerline) starts crapping on ELT and other government emergency frequencies.
Sigh...

Re:Actually

[ryanmfw]

I wasn't talking *about* Bill O'Reilly either. Obviously, you see one side of the issue, the one where Fox is unbiased, but of course that's what you believe. It justifies your own views. If you said they were biased your views wouldn't be invalidated, just not reaffirmed by some unopinionated source. You just see Fox as unbiased, and based upon what they tell you, everyone else is. Others see only the other side, that Fox is biased, and CNN is not. That is also incorrect. Maybe when you grow up you will realize that none of them are telling you the whole truth and will determine that you have to discover things on your own and not rely on some idiot like Brit Hume to give you his agenda or Peter Jennings to give you his bias. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when most people can only see one side of this.

Just one bit about Fox News somehow seperating their reporting and their opinion, that's not really true. Obviously you don't pay too much attention or you trust what they say too much to accurately analyze what they say.