It's that time again. Winter in New England. So I want to find out what the weather is going to be like because, well, it can change rather quickly and it is good to have an idea of what to expect before heading out. So I now have FiOS and the first thing I think of is... ok, I've heard something about snow coming from some friends I think I better check it out. Let's try Weather Channel HD. That should be great. High Def local weather on the 8's. What's this?!? All I get is a general description of weather for the entire North East and other large regions of the USA. That's not very local.
OK, so I turn to the next obvious choice to see what the weather is going to be... WeatherScan Local. It has "local" in the name so surely it will have the weather for the city where I am even if I do have to put up with watching something in Standard Def which is a bit blurry for text. Oh great, 3 cities and none quite match the weather for where I am very consistently.
But wait. There is the WeatherBug Widget. Saw it in a FiOS TV ad. It can help me plan my day quickly. I can even check it out while watching my favorite shows and it is genuinely "local". Yep. There it is. It is going to snow. That's great. Errr... How much is there going to be? Is this a dusting? An inch or two? A foot or two? Would rather help in planning my day to know this sort of thing, but no... that info is absent.
I like the idea of being able to check the weather at any time, but seriously... the three most obvious options available on FiOS are rather useless. So here are some requests:
Is there a way to have a genuine "local on the 8's" displayed on The Weather Channel HD? Comcast used to do this when I had them on The Weather Channel (in Standard Def). Failing that... is there some way to localize WeatherScan local... and while you're at it is there a way to make it available in High Def? Or... if neither of those options are possible. Is there some way to add a text description/summary screen to the WeatherBug Widget that could give a text summary of the forecast. While little graphics are "cute" they really don't provide the necessary info.
Thanks,
-Mike
The Weather Channel outsources its local forecasts to a company called WeatherStar. That company has not yet produced an HD version of their "local on the 8s" software (they were beta testing it in NYC a few years ago), so TWC chose to put an HD national forecast on their HD feed. This is the same feed that goes to Comcast, Verizon, or anyone else, so there's nothing Verizon can do about that.
"Weatherscan," I believe, only gets as local as your VHO area. So if you're in Massachusetts, that means it's all coming out of Burlington, MA.
Weatherbug widget could be more detailed, yes.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
