[ShadowTD]

Bear with me chaps, I'm trying to make a point.

The poster asking for the latest Starview image prompted me to start thinking about a situation that's annoyed me for a long time. What if you don't want to 'steal' cable (or satellite) but just want a better box?

For example, my friend in Germany has a twin-tuner satellite PVR. It runs linux. It has a network connection. He records his TV, drags it over the network to his pooter and reencodes it to DiVX and archives it out to DVD or keeps it on his 2TB of HDD space. And this is legal.

But in the UK, both Sky and Virgin have placed restrictions on the receiving equipment you can use with their services. Sky won't make a CAM available and VM state that you cannot connect any non-branded equipment to their network. I realise the argument that can be put forward for a closed network - you know all of the kit and exactly how it should react. However, the customer (and particularly the tech-savvy early adopter) loses out because there are no manufacturers competing to make the receiving equipment better. Can you imagine if the BBC mandated the use of specific equipment with their service?

Admittedly, I don't think CS in it's current state could handle it (they can't even seem to get a new V+ install working reliably it seems!) but if you think back to the old days of analogue Sky they seemed to manage with a multitude of different boxes.

I've been contemplating getting one of these all-singing cable boxes but using it with my legitimate card ('pretending' to be my second Samsung box in effect). However, I think I'm still too chicken and would hate to be cut off by VM.

Thoughts? Please keep it legal as well!