Gotta say that you are spot on there 2old,
Sky is almost universaly loathed by the hobbyist community (Perhaps mainly because it hasn't been hacked), but on a programme to programme basis probably offer at least as good, if not better value than most other European providers.
I, like many other subscribers would like to pay for only what I want to view, but in real terms, it ain't going to happen. It probably doesn't help that a lot of people lump the PPV freebies into the available hacked packages, but of course, they are not freely available to the legitimate subscriber, only at a cost.