[quote author=Eric link=topic=5054.msg189782#msg189782 date=1401724712
I'm sure there has to be a legitimate business reason behind delaying cutting off the analogue feed other than that enough people at TWC are "sentimental" about the legacy STARs. This is a large country with a huge number of headends, and, even with plenty of advance notice, chances are not everyone's going to be ready for such a major change. Given the choice between meeting its deadline but losing viewers or quietly extending the deadline in the hope that those headends that haven't caught up to modernity yet eventually will, TWC would much rather retain viewers through the use of antiquated equipment.
I'm sure not every headend operator can easily afford to upgrade to new equipment to keep up with the rapidly-changing times, and The Weather Channel usually isn't at the top of the list of priorities for where a headend's money should be spent. If money were no object, then every headend would be equipped with an IntelliStar 2. My cable company is currently in the process of upgrading to an all-digital signal, years behind some of the bigger players in the cable TV field. And there are plenty of cable companies smaller than mine that are lucky to still exist, basically.
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There are a number of reasons that TWC needed to get rid of the analog feed:
1. Videocipher. The Videocipher technology was a big help for TWC's systems. But that tech started going away in the 90s. General Instrument killed production of the VCII+/RS modules in 98. As time passed, working VCII encoders/decoders probably became harder to come by. That, combined with the shift of other broadcasters to digital format made it necessary to transition. And Motorola's decision to stop authorizing VCII/RS decoders at the end of 2008 cut off TWC from the BUD market. (I somehow envisioned in my home TWC's uplink using a Videocipher Encoder that still had "Property of HBO" stenciled on it somewhere :-D)
2. Cost-effectiveness. In the 90s, digital compression enabled more than one program to share a single transponder on a satellite. Where 25 years ago, you had 24 channels on a C-Band satellite (32 on Ku-Band), you can now fit a lot more. That and analog satellite equipment was probably becoming more expensive to maintain. And parts for the existing reception/transmission equipment were probably becoming harder to come by (like Videocipher). That and prices for digital reception equipment for existing cable headends have dropped over the years since digital transmission became the standard. And now, TWC, (and it's corporate overlords at NBCUniversal/Comcast), can take transponder 13 and add a compressed digital signal on that one transponder for its own use.
All in all, it was a day that was coming. The fact that it took more than five years is a miracle.
