it 100% depends on your MSO

it 100% depends on your MSO (Cable company) on how they protect their content. Very very few will leave all the channels copy-freely. I’ve heard the majority will Copy-Once the premium channels, but leave the basics open. Where are you based? Who’s your cable company?

As you state, you want TV everywhere, so the fool-proof way of doing this will be extenders–you mentioned your displeasure in the performance of the Linksys, the XBox360 is a bit faster, but still not as fast as a client, and then it draws a lot more power than the Linksys as well. is that acceptable?