P2P Kontiki Hell
Perhaps the MS involvement isn't the worst bit?
Sky, BBC and others appear to be using a P2P app from a company called Kontiki. Not in itself bad but...
If you uninstall the player app then the P2P app and service keep running, chewing up bandwidth and resources.
No uninstaller options and lordy help ya if you just go and stop the services.
Now, you'd think mayhap an obvious link on the Channels websites to a cleanup tool? Nope, you'll need to strongarm them or just follow http://static.sky.com/kclean/KClean_51102.0.exe
BBC/Sky etc... if you're listening, take a long hard look at what you're doing. This is pretty damn close to malware