But they mentioned the "network access" was to allow remote programming, and they also mentioned programming from a mobile phone - presumably using the phone connection, or even the satellite link (unlikely?).

It would probably be a combination of the two:

- a signal sent via the satellite to tell your box (or a range of boxes) to dialup to collect a remote programming request
- the box would then dialup to get the details

Maybe...

It is unlikely to be done with just the phone connection, as it can only make outgoing calls, so it would have to make calls regularly throughout the day looking for recording requests.

They might be able to do it all via the satellite feed, the unique ID for each viewing card isn't that big and if I remember correctly the unique ID for each programme is only a 16bit number at the moment (which I think is what stops them from going beyond a 7 day EPG currently). They could have space on a transponder dedicated to sending out the requests and just have the boxes tune to the transponder whenever they weren't using the second tuner for anything else.

If the data was small enough they could piggy back it on the "now and next" data that every transponder has to transmit, but I suspect there isn't enough space there.

I think we will see remote recording long before we see a network connection. I really hope they offer something along the lines of DigiGuide on a website that we can then use for choosing programming. Knowing Sky the website will be completely dumbed down and a pain in the arse to use