1) Looks like almost all of those are Digicipher II (GI/Moto's digital broadcasting equivalent to VCII, sort of) and using the encrypted mode, so yeah, those would need not only a subscription (or at least the permission from Viacom or whomever to receive them) and a compatible receiver. In most cases you can't get DCII on a DVB box, even the in-the-clear stuff, although I think there might be a driver for the Dreambox that does it but I really couldn't tell you. Looks like you can get the BBC from transponder 4, though, if you have a receiver that does DVB-S2*.
One of the guys on the other thread (think it was zzdiesel) has a DC2 box ("4DTV" as he describes it), but the impression he gives in some of his later posts (after you had dropped off the thread) is that DC2 probably won't be around for too much longer. The more versatile (and open) DVBS/S2 really does most (if not all) of the stuff DC2 does anyways and it's an open, industry-standard system, so it really is kind of redundant. I think betwixt the two of them there might be/have been a somewhat obscure "format war" going on that we never really heard about!
* There are presently two implementations of DVB on satellite: S and S2. S2 is like "S on steroids", since it can also do fancy stuff like MPEG2/4 HD and the like. An S2-equipped receiver is usually backward-compatible with regular S programming, but not vice-versa. Upgrades are available for a number of older receivers, like my Pansat, that give it that capability, although I think some of the the newer DVB silicon may already have it.
2) Yeah, permanently setting it at one bird is one way to do it (mine is currently like that since I don't have a motor), you can try mounting additional LNBs on the arms if your dish has a T-mount (like the better-quality ones have), or you could put it on a motor that's controlled by the receiver. These days a technology called DISEQC (dy-sek, DIgital Satellite EQuipment Controller) is widely deployed which puts the signalling and operating voltage for motors, polarators and LNBs on the same coax as the downconverted RF signal, so you don't have to run a bunch of extra cables like you would have had to do years ago--just one common line for everything. (Just remember to shut the receiver OFF completely before adding or removing LNBs and things, to avoid frying them or the receiver--you may even need to unplug the box from the wall, depending on its design. I learnt that the hard way once.)
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My mind is still stuck on the old VCII days of C-Band, where you paid for a subscription (or in my family's case, paid $10 for some codes and got it all for free) and a rotatable dish. I'm still trying to figure out if DVB-S works in a similar fashion."
Yeah, to some extent it works in a similar fashion, except it's much more complex to get set up--unless you have blind scan and a motor/dish mover, you basically have to know the exact specifications of the transponder you want to receive (frequency, symbol/bit rates, error correction, service/programme identifiers, etc.) and you have to basically get it exactly in position or it won't come in. It's changed considerably from the days when you could just point your dish south, fiddle with the position, polarity and subcarriers a bit and get a usable signal.
You *might* be able to get away with using an old analogue LNB for DVB work, provided that it's in good repair and you have equipment that can power it (I've known guys who have done that, to varying degrees of success or disappointment) but it's best to use one designed specifically for DVB since they have a lower noise floor and are usually compatible with DISEQC. That, and you can't use a commonly-available Echostart/Direct LNB to receive programming from the non-DBS Ku-band birds because they use circular polarisation, which is incompatible with the linear polarisation the non-DBS birds use. Most reasonable-quality IC/FTA DVB receivers do support such LNBs, for compatibility with circular signals.
Now, if your receiver box/USB/PCI board has CAM (conditional access module) support, you could probably still call up the cable nets that use DVB and see about getting ones for their packages for whatever their price is. I've actually never done that myself so I couldn't tell you if they do that or not. Theoretically, there's a chance that they either (1) might hang up on you because they think you're just cranking them ("duhh...DVB? What the hell is DVB? Who are you, anyways? How did you get this number?") or (2) not provide it because they want you to get it via DBS instead. Depending how clueless or uncooperative they are, it might be a good chance to brush up on your social engineering skills!
Either that or you could venture into the super-technical world of descramblers and pirate decryption. Granted I'm not really the one to ask about that (and it would probably require a whole forum unto itself, since like with analogue transmission, there are so many different scrambling formats that can be used with DVB) but may be what you'd need to do as a last resort, if there's some cable net that you just *have* to have and all else fails...
http://global-cm.net/ also has satellite charts and information on how to set up DVB kit.
There's also a Google Maps-based site that gives positioning information and shows you the direction in which to point your dish, but I don't remember the URL right off the top of my head, think it might have been dishpointer.com or something like that.
