High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 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.