The cable companies, and other satellite TV companies have a list of who subscribes to them. Everyone knows this much or ought to know this much. What the cable companies can do is to air a commercial for some kind of bogus product, like “wizbang odor eaters” for $9.99. Who ever responds to this add has no way of knowing that it is a fake. Hence they have to give thier name and address and stuff to get their “wizbang odor eaters.” Then the cable company checks thier list and matches it with the names from the TV commercial. Whoever doesn’t match is probably stealing cable TV, and a bogus service call is arranged. The technician will then report his findings to Cable and they will prosecute.
“Well, gee, I saw it on the TV in a bar. I forget which one.”
I’ve heard a few rumours about this kind of thing. From what I understand, there is a great deal of rumour in the satellite hacking area, so I guess we need to take it all with a grain of salt…
Apparently, the satellite companies have some sort of device that they can point at a dish and see if it is receiving signal or not. Then they can compare that to their list of paying subscribers. So it does sound like a similar situation as the UK thing…
Although, as I said, it’s just a rumour that I heard about. And it was the possibility of it happening not an act of it occurring…
The dish receives all the signals that it sees.
The receiver in the house does the decoding. Instructions can be sent to the circuit cards in the receiver. Apparently they can disable cards that don’t have registered addresses with an instruction such as “If your number is x or y or z continue to function. Else turn yourself off.”
It would be a little difficult to point a device at any number of antennas worth mentioning, unless it’s done from the super secret Dish-TV space station. 
Yes actually It is, the government has verious spy devices that do just that, but they’re geared more for seeing what you’re doing on a computer, and you have to pretty close for it to work. You could even make one yourself if you know your way around an electronic workbench. I’ve seen one of these in use at a “Spy Shop” for Private Investigators.
My IMHO about this topic. We have microwave radiation slicing through our bodies at all times, I don’t think theres anything wrong with tapping into it. I’ve looked into this topic alot and discovered that unless you have ALOT of time on your hands and can make everything from scratch you won’t be saving money vs. paying for the service for several years.
And then you managed to get home within 60 seconds and place a phone call from your home?
Well…yeah.
Back in the ooooolllllddddd days…
ahem, the 80’s…
The cable companies caught people the old fashion way.
Through their stupidity 
A friend at the time was a dedicated cable stealer.
I imagine these could still be used today.
One way was to make the cable ‘fuzzy’ this would go on for a couple of weeks getting fuzzier and fuzzier. If you called in to complain, it would clear right up. If you were stealing and called in…People were actually caught this way.
Another was a permanently scrambled channel. It would look normal in every way but they would have commercials for good priced products and free giveaways. The number to call was never spoken, only written. Because the channel was scrambled for everyone, anyone calling in…