you have sky
then you have sky+
then you have sky+hd

with normal sky you only need one cable
with sky+ and sky+hd you need 2 cables

this is to be able to record one thing and watch something else as you will have 2 separate feeds coming in

if you only have normal sky then you will need to change the lnb on the dish to one that has 4 outputs, 2 for one box, 2 for another for multiroom

we used ot have just the sky+
then we did multiroom with just a normal box upstairs and the sky+ box downstairs
then we went hd with the 300gb hd box downstairs and moved the sky+ box upstairs
we currently have sky+hd (1tb) downstairs and the sky+hd box upstairs

the issues we had were that they (sky) require you to keep your "main" box paired with your "main" card, when you move boxes you lose all your recorded stuff, so this time around we kept the cards in the respective boxes

that failed when they kept the hd box paired with the hd registered card

so we had to get that switched over, which meant that all the stuff we had recorded, in hd, was unviewable as there was no hd availability on that card in that box

and for all this we pay around about £85 a month, but we do get sky world (movies, sports, etc) plus the hd (£10) plus the multiroom (£10) plus the phone (£9.50) plus internet (free) but their prices have recently gone up, or are about to so things could change

the offer they are currently doing, or were doing, was free instalation if you get the box, the new standard box is the hd box with a 500gb capacity to replace the older 300gb box, even if you don't go for the hd subscription because it comes ready to do hd and 3d

the 1tb box uses a different operating system and things are much quicker on it when you scroll through the menu's and channels etc, but no other obvious differences i can spot so far