You may not realize that both live TV and recordings you make from a CableCARD tuner are DRM-controlled. That *may* prevent you from waching some recordings on any computer except the one where the program was recorded. The difficult part is that there is no single rule that can tell you for sure how that will work. It depends on how your cable provider marks shows with DRM controls. There's a DRM "flag" known as the CopyOnce flag that they control. When they set it for a broadcast the show is locked by the DRM. It can only be played back on the computer where it was recorded. When it's not set, you can play the recording back anywhere.
You can count on premium channels like HBO, SHO, etc to always be CopyOnce. At the other end all your local affiliate stations (ABC, NBC, etc) will be unlocked. The rest are up for grabs and that depends entirely on your cable provider, and, *worse* it can change without notice since there is no real clear rule about how the flag may be used in those cases. You have to plan for all that if you intend to set up a multi-TV system or networked media center system. Last I heard FiOS was pretty lenient; the only things marked CopyOnce were premium channels but I'd definitely check that out if it matters to you. How they mark things can even vary by region so it can end up being a real PITA to deal with. And like I said, you can design a whole system around the fact that they don't mark things as locked and a month later they'll change that on you too. So be careful with the decisions if it's a deal breaker.
The only way to freely view everything, everywhere is to use extenders. You record off a centralized HTPC then all the remote TVs/monitors view recordings made by that HTPC via extender. That's fully supported and DRM doesn't come into play. If you don't want extenders you may be able to deal with it by recording those shows that are DRM-locked at the PC where you mostly watch them, or even double-record some shows. That's possible using the tuner sharing cabability of the DCT's now since they can be "shared-out" among multiple WMCs even though the tuners are all physically in one machine (or network based in the case of the HDHR Prime). However an annoyance here is that there is no centralized EPG capability for WMC. You have to schedule and manage recordings separately at each WMC location. One last point that may be good to know, even if a recording is marked CopyOnce, you can still move that recording to another machine and play it back across a network *as long as* you're playing it back on the computer where it was recorded. That at least allows you to move all files to a server and play them back at your main HTPC.
Hope that clears things up some. It's still not entirely troublefree or as simple as STBs thanks to the DRM.
