Moxi’s “Ticker” feature can provide you with lots of great up-to-date weather, sports, and news information. Read on to learn what the Ticker is, and how to get the most from it…

First off, what is the Ticker?

The Ticker is a small banner on the bottom of the screen containing several “tabs” of periodically updating content. The tabs include such items as Weather, Forecast, Sports (news), NFL (scores), News, World (news), and quite a few others. The goal is to provide you with easy-to-read news and information at the bottom of the screen while still allowing you to view your shows, ininterrupted and in obscured.

So how do you know if you have the Ticker enabled? Simple: Press the “Ticker” button on the remote! You will also have a Ticker “Category” along the horizontal Moxi menu. If neither is available, by all means, check with your Cable provider to see if and when the Ticker will be available in your market. It turns out that the Ticker WAS available in my market, but it just wasn’t enabled for me, so a quick call to the Cable company got it enabled.

OK, so you have the Ticker enabled, but how does it work and what can you do with it?

When you press the Ticker button on the remote, the screen image “shrinks” slightly and a banner appears at the bottom of the screen containing the topics and the associated information. Note: this is not the “1/4 size screen” displayed when viewing the Moxi menu, but about a 4/5 or so size view that maintains the full image, but provides room for the ticker. The current Ticker topic is highlighted, and you can scroll left and right from topic to topic. If the highlighted topic has additional information, say News headlines or sports scores, you can scroll up and down, scrolling through the additional information. For example, the “Weather” topic displays your local weather, but scrollung up or down lets you see the weather conditions in other cities around the country. Another example is in the Sports scores topics: Highlight the NFL topic and you can scroll up and down through all the latest game scores.

Pressing the “OK” button on any topic, pops up a small menu offering other options. These options vary from topic to topic, so play around with them to become familiar. Typically, there is a “More Info” selection. Press it, and a larger window opens displaying more detailed information like the full news story associated with a News headline or more detailed weather information for the Weather topic.

Further, the Ticker has a nice “auto-scrolling” feature. After a short, but reasonable delay (5-10 seconds or so–didn’t time it) the Ticker scrolls to the next item. If the current topic has multiple headlines or entries, then the Ticker auto-scrolls through the headlines, scrolling to the next topic after it displays all the headlines. If there is no additional information, then the ticker auto-scrolls to the next topic, cycling through the entire list. If you have ever watched the scores scrolling on ESPN, then you understand the concept. But wait. You say that you just want keep an eye on just NHL scores or a single game score? What to do? Hold on, Moxi provides a solution!

Two of the popup menu selections is “Lock Topic” and “Lock Item”. The first one will lock the highlighted topic and auto-scroll through all the headlines/scores in that topic, never scrolling to another topic. The second option locks the highlighted selection and just auto-updates, never auto-scrolling. For example, with sports scores, just highlight the game you want to monitor, and the ticker locks onto that entry and auto-updates as scores are updated. Unlocking the topics or items is as simple as opening up the popup menu again and selecting the proper selection. Pressing the Ticker button again will dismiss the ticker and revert the screen to full-screen.

Well, that’s it. The Ticker is not a “wiz-bang” feature, but it does provide some excellent information at a button press. Just another example of Digeo’s innovations in Moxi!