I had a long conversation with sky customer services yesterday afternoon posing my questions about all sorts of options. The answer when i asked about sky+ with freesat was that it could be done for £10/mth but he warned me about using a box sourced from elsewhere. I'd told him my brother was upgrading to HD so would have one going spare. He said without a warranty it was risky as the subscription to sky+ was 12 mth minimum but my box might fail and i would either have to buy a new one or tuff.
Unsurprisingly he was pushing the other packages for new customers, but it did sound like i could probably get this freesat sky+ solution if i pushed hard enough.
Thing is, having never been a sky customer before, i could get multiroom sky+(with skysports for 6mths free, way-hey for cricket) for £100 for the boxes and £300 in subs.
If after a year i thought i wasn't getting good value i could sell my equipment on ebay for about £100 (low estimate due to HD etc emerging), so then i would have had the Ashes plus brilliant PVR and happy girlfriend for about £300.
Of course, telling my mrs (and myself for that matter) after the 12 mths are up that it's all going back to just 4 channels and a VCR might be tough!!