The break limits imposed by the channel resulted in TMC reducing the number of internally produced interstitial segments that it aired during promotional breaks, with interstitials airing over the next four years consisting mainly of trailers and shorter-length behind-the-scenes segments for upcoming and current films produced by their originating studios. Although TMC was carried by most subscription television providers, there were some that did not have agreements to carry the channel, even if they already carried Showtime. As an example, now-defunct satellite provider PrimeStar never carried The Movie Channel; weeks after it announced a new carriage agreement with Viacom in January 1999 that would have resulted in the channel joining the provider's lineup, PrimeStar sold its assets to Hughes Communications (then-owners of competitor DirecTV, which would neither carry Viacom's premium and basic-tier services nor Time Warner's premium channels until its 1999 acquisition of United States Satellite Broadcasting). In May 1994, TCI dropped The Movie Channel from more than 30 of the cable provider's service markets. At the time, Viacom was in the midst of an antitrust lawsuit against TCI on accusations that the provider engaged in a "conspiracy to eliminate" Showtime and its sister channels (including TMC) and pressuring Viacom to settle its lawsuit through the negotiation of a carriage contract with the media company that expired in January 1993; Viacom reportedly stated that TCI threatened to hurt both Showtime and TMC unless Viacom agreed to purchase an ownership stake in Encore (now Starz Encore), a network which Viacom claimed to have first conceptually conceived four years earlier during negotiations between the two companies that, if they had been successful, would have resulted in TCI purchasing 50% of Showtime Networks. Representatives for the affected TCI systems said that the decision to remove The Movie Channel from their lineups was made at the local level and was not a directive by company management. Viacom and TCI settled the Showtime Networks distribution dispute in January 1995, preceding the former's $2.3-billion sale of its Viacom Cablevision systems to TCI affiliate company Intermedia Partners. In August 1997, TMC underwent an extensive rebranding effort that resulted in the channel briefly premiering its own original movies (which were produced through Showtime's original programming division), along with the addition of daily movie marathons set around a specific theme and a companion block known as the "Double Vision Weekend", a monthly weekend-long marathon of movies that comprised multiple themed mini-marathons.