Hello captain.

You can buy the box seperately, and then ring Sky up and say you want the sky + service but you have sourced the box elsewhere My neighbour did this last week

As for the multi-room option. You can connect the 2 up without sky, but that means both box's will watch the same thing. Ideal if it's just you in there

But a pain if the salmon canyon's wanting to watch emmerdale or conronation street's omnibus, and you want to watch the footie