The Weather Star 4000 is the first graphic-capable model of the WeatherStar line manufactured for The Weather Channel. It was first introduced in December 1989 and was designed by Canadian electronics company Amirix (then the Applied Microelectronics Institute). The WeatherStar 4000 was manufactured by Northern Telecom. It had an improved display font over its predecessor, the Weather Star III, with mixed-case (though this didn't appear on launch). The first 4000s that were placed in service were programmed to operate in a text-only mode, like its predecessors (using its improved font instead). However, the 4000 used slightly different flavors (arrangements of information and forecast products) that included, beginning in April 1990, a graphical radar page at the end of the local forecast. While widely used during most of the 1990s, many cable companies began to replace the 4000 with the newer Weather Star XL in 1998 and 1999 and - later - the IntelliStar in the next decade. The 4000 remains in use primarily in smaller and rural cable providers where upgrading to a more modern Weather Star would be a significant expense.
The Weather Star 4000 also was deployed in Canada by The Weather Network and its French-language sister MétéoMédia from 1992 to 1997, when owner Pelmorex replaced it with its proprietary PMX system. The Weather Star 4000 displayed various products in Canada that were never available in the U.S.
Read more about Weather Star 4000: Standard Features, Glitches, Weather Star 4000 and The Weather Network/MétéoMedia
Famous quotes containing the words weather and/or star:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)