IntelliStar
(Redirected from Vocal Local)
Categories: The Weather Channel
The IntelliStar is the fifth-generation successor to the WeatherStar systems used by the American cable TV and satellite TV channel The Weather Channel (TWC), for inserting local forecast and current weather information (such as the "Local on the 8s" portion of their program schedule) into TWCs programming. Like the WeatherStar, it is installed as well at the cable TV company's headend.
The IntelliStar has many enhanced features over its predecessor, the WeatherStar XL. As well as receiving local weather data via satellite like the WeatherStars, it also has the capability of receiving the same data over the internet as a back up with its built-in ethernet port.
It also has improved display graphics, dynamic radar capabilities, and a new feature called Vocal Local, in which a pre-recorded voice will read the weather conditions displayed on screen. It plays the background music from its satellite feed and uses ducking to reduce the volume of the background music when speaking.
The IntelliStar differs in design from previous WeatherStar units, considering the fact that the IntelliStar is basically a customized rack-mount Intel CPU-based PC. It runs the FreeBSD operating system, running specialized software written by The Weather Channel to make it function as a IntelliStar, but otherwise using commodity hardware of the PC platform. This was done to minimize maintenance costs, and to ease upgrading of the IntelliStar units. The previous WeatherStar units used a proprietary hardware design that hampered any hardware upgrades.
A modified version of the IntelliStar is also used by TWC for their WeatherScan service, which is basically a 24/7 version of the local WeatherStar/IntelliStar-generated segments on TWC, and carried on a separate channel on those cable TV systems carrying WeatherScan.