The Weather Channel's HD feed gets interactive on DirecTV
By Richard Lawler 
posted Oct 6th 2009 10:51PM
posted Oct 6th 2009 10:51PM
A year after launching on The Weather Channel SD and receiving "nearly a billion impressions" there, DirecTV has added interactive Local on Demand and Local on the 8s widgets to The Weather Channel HD. Same as always, this lets viewers dial up weather alerts, the most recent updates for their area, or other weather info while still watching the main channel. While some may prefer the tried and true method of "looking out the window" to find out what the current weather conditions are, we're always glad to have options.
pics?
This would be exciting if it were 1993. If I want to see the weather, I can look on my computer, phone, game console.
This lets Directv compete with local cable weather insertion.
I just tried this and I like it. This is the same mechanism they use with ESPN. They need to marry this mechanism for a better search feature (a la IMDB) which would promote more positive timeshifting, PPV, and encourage subscribing to premium channels based on search results.
How do these widgets work? I'm a dish subscriber and the interactive features I get are an after thought and awful to use. Takes forever to load and the result is usually worthless. Are Direct's widgets quick and unobtrusive? Dish's interactive offerings take the viewer completely out of the TV viewing experience.
The apps haven't been available on my system in about a week.
This is no big deal for me here in Australia... although we haven't found the need for a HD version of The Weather Channel (Australia)... We've had Press Red interactivity for all the local forecasts and conditions by postcode since 2004!