Bascially the Eurovox is a cable reciever that will play the majority of channels that most people subscribe too. all your sky channels basically apart from pay for view films and sport. there is one problem with the eurovox boxes that they are not linux based so they have limited functionality for example the cable network are moving there coding to Nagra sometime this year and early next year which will render the eurovox reciever useless. the type of box if your looking to get should be a linux based reciever which is capable of having the software customised to accept the new Nagra coding. the best one in my opinion for Standard def box is the Black Pearl TGM 220 which you can purchase from WWW.SATKINGS.CO.UK. I haven't done any research into the HD boxes, but for all things cable and satelite check out the site. very useful. I have done a bit of research into these boxes but yet to buy one.
The cable companies can track who is using them as the eurovox and all other recievers gathering non ligitimate channels it is done by disconnecting every one in the street and plugging them in one by one to see where the spike is appearing and this of course links to the house number and they can knock on the door. i got this info from a cable engineer but said its very unlikley that this will happen.
You can also get chipped broadband modems to get your internet for free apparantley