Let me get something straight.

[Spring Rubber]

I just thought of this. If you have cable and get TWC HD, you're seeing the exact same national feed that I'm seeing on DirecTV until the HD STAR launches, right? Doesn't that mean that people watching TWC HD via cable won't get dual-feed severe weather updates unless they switch over to the SD feed? If so, that's really great for TWC's marketing, especially with the *huge* HD launch only hours away.

IMO, the best solution would be to put an end to the dual-feed stuff and start preempting nationally more often. People with satellite and people who have earlier STARs are also getting screwed. Do you seriously think the IntelliStar is available in all of these smaller towns in tornado alley where tornadoes generally hit? I don't think so.

[wxmancanada]

Seeing as the live segment control room is already HD, they can do weather update segments with the HD feed if they want. For people who get TWC HD via cable, the cable headends might not have the STAR's in place, but they do have the IRD boxes in place which TWC can flip over to receive the alternate feed.

[Spring Rubber]

So the dual-feed feature isn't really a feature of the IntelliStar the way they make it sound?

[wxmancanada]

So the dual-feed feature isn't really a feature of the IntelliStar the way they make it sound?

The IS is downstream of the IRD, and in essence, it is the IRD that tunes the dual feed. The IS does receive the signal to change the IRD, from the TWC national feed, and then sends the signal back to the IRD via Ethernet, they do this by telling the STAR ID (25816, Orlando) to tune the IRD to the secondary feed, the IRD then tunes the signal. If they really wanted to, they could put a signal in the stream telling a particular IRD by its self to tune to the other feed, but they would have to find out what the IRD - ID (not STAR ID) is.