BobK

I don't wish to sound thick but I'm confused about how sky TV is charged etc.

I recently moved into a house that has a dish installed and the previous owners used sky up to the day they left. When we moved in we discovered that they had also left the decoder unit (they moved back to the UK as had no use for it). The unit sat there unused for a couple of weeks and then last night , on a whim, I plugged it in and connected it up to my TV. It appears that I still have access to all the previous occupants channels etc. We have a different phone number and the unit is not connected to the phone socket.

The decoder is an older PACE model and has no card or card slot. How does it work, I'm assuming that the only reason that I can still receive channels is because the previous owners had prepaid for a certain length of time, but saying that how does sky know that I'm still receiving pictures and how does it still allow access?

a simple explanation would really help out

thanks

Bob