But regardless, why would one want to give a box to a neighbour or friend when you're paying for it. I don't understand why one would have another box in someone else's house when the owner thats paying for it, as next door gets it for free.
how can you be so naive?
seriously?
the full sky package (tv only) is like £60+ per month or something on full price.
for an additional multi room card it's like £10 extra for all the same channels which is £50 less.
you give your multi room card to neighbour, and neighbour then gives you £35 every month or whatever half the price is or whatever arrangement you make with said neighbour.
£70 - £35 = £35
so your both paying £35 a month for a £60 per month package both of you save £25 per month. but sky makes £70 a month instead of £120 per month, meaning they lose £50 per month (which is why you both save £25).
it's the card not the cable that activates the channels. so you could actually give the card to your brother/sister who lives 300 miles away and make the same arrangement with them.
therefore both boxes need to be connected to the same phone line, then sky boxes at random times every month phone sky on a freephone number.
sky then checks that both of these cards called back within the same month from the same land line number.
therefore your brother/sister would get caught out as no call back had been made, therefore it is usually easier to do with a neighbour and extend your phone line into their house.
again people saying would you really let your neighbour have access to your phone line? well a lot of people would if it meant half price sky, if you found any calls made by them then you would simply cut off their multi room sub as well as make them pay for their sky sub up front every month to cover yourself.
but usually if you know your neighbour well enough to be doing such practices, chances are they wont be trying to scam you, as essentially you are doing them a favour. also you wouldnt go into this sort of arrangement with someone you didnt trust, that would be idiotic.
therefore a lot of people don't make this arrangement simply because they dont know their neighbour or get on with them or trust them. without the phone line call back system a lot more people would be scamming sky. as a lot of people simply wouldnt give their neighbour access to their phone line.
my point is that the phone line system is old and annoying i would rather make the call backs through my broadband (internet) which both my boxes connect to through wi-fi. the problem with phone line is you need to either have huge extension wires running throughout your home, or pay £75 for wireless phone jacks.
why they simply cannot use wi-fi is beyond me for callbacks, they say it would be too easy to spoof, but would it really? surely some security expert can come up with something which is hard to circumvent?