Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Neither did I. I was at a late friend's house when a Virgin engineer came to fit his dodgy NTL box (though it was Virgin). I asked it it had a return path that could catch him out, to which he replied that the box was invisible to the network.

Was this true? If so, how did they catch people out in those days?

I was also told that Virgin weren't too bothered as people using these boxes had to subscribe to at least the minimum subscription, so it drove up sales and that them accessing Sky Sports and Sky Movies for free didn't cost the company any money as legitimate subscriptions to these services didn't make any money for them after they'd paid Sky (I believe that this is no longer the case, which is why Virgin now actively market these products).

This is said to be the reason why it was allowed to go on for so long and why they didn't pay for a new encryption system (until Sky insisted upon it).