[Stuart]

Originally Posted by joyrider1

I think some of you are missing a point here. I also looked at the other forums, and it seems to me that those who steal cable also have other paid for Virgin services, probally broadband and phone along with a STB on a low package.

They don't do that out of charity, or some sense of duty. They do that to ensure that the next engineer that looks in their local street box doesn't look at their connection and think "Oh, there's a connection not being used, I'll just unhook it and us it for someone else."

From what I can gather most of the people with the dodgy boxes use them to get the premium channels that cost extra. These are invariably Sky Sports and Sky Movies.

Maybe. Still doesn't justify theft of service though.

Virgin pass on the premiums from these channels to Sky, with very little profit to themselves. Most of Virgins revenue comes from the installation of all the three services and the monthly charge for running them, not from Sky's premium channels.
Are Virgin serving Sky's purpose here?
Shouldnt the boffins at Virgin really be sorting out the criminally poor HD content..................?

Err, more money would probably help sort of HD.

Look, I am not going out of my way to defend Virgin. Truth be told, most big companies would shaft their suppliers given half the chance (in my experience), and I suspect VM would, but bear in mind this: OnDigital.


OnDigital used an easy to crack encryption system, with the result that (they suspect) over half the DTT boxes in use were using dodgy cards to access premium content. OD folded with huge lossess.

One or two people using chipped boxes won't affect VM. Several hundred people using chipped boxes won't affect VM. Several thousand people using chipped boxes WILL affect VM.