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Local Forecast / Re: Lack of flavor variety
« on: March 30, 2012, 10:11:43 AM »I miss the 4x4 screen, too. It's very nostalgic, and I liked seeing the wind speeds. I'm only one person, however.
I'm all for nostalgia, too, but as I pointed out a few months ago (or a year ago, or whenever), those screens are just a carryover from the "Latest Hourly Observations" page of the earliest WeatherStars. Back when there were no graphics, no maps, no icons - this was the only way to display that kind of information.
Despite advances in technology, a lot of old screens got copied almost verbatim from older Stars, despite new ways (such as metro maps) of showing this information. The Weather Network in Canada got very innovative when they upgraded their units from the WeatherStar III to the WeatherStar 4000, and even more so when they later upgraded to their own proprietary system. But The Weather Channel just keeps refashioning old screens again and again.
In fact, because the WeatherStar 4000 was designed to, essentially, copy the WeatherStar III (think to when the 4000 malfunctioned, and you could see the 4000's version of a III product before all the fancy graphics were drawn around/over it), its abilities just weren't tapped nearly as much as in Canada, where they used more attractive fonts, fades and wipes (the American 4000 could do this, too, but the feature was removed very early), and so on.
Backwards compatibility is a nice thing, but... by running so many systems of so many ages, TWC has boxed itself into a corner by needing to format outgoing information in only certain ways. And the lack of creativity (such as still maintaining an essentially text list of cities instead of displaying a more attractive-looking map) is inexcusable, considering what its Canadian cousin is capable of. While the IntelliStar is ahead of The Weather Network's system, back in the 1990s (American 4000 vs. Canadian 4000), the Canadian version won hands-down in terms of not only the products available, but the attractiveness of the system. (The major drawback, I thought, was that the radar and satellite images were static and small. But the American 4000 didn't even offer satellite.)
</rant>
.gif "lgh (21)")
