Between Cable TV and Satellite, which option is most compatible with the
features of the ATI All-In-Wonder card. I heard that hooking a cable box to
the ATI card takes away certain software features. Would satellite take
away those features?
The problem with Cable and Satellite is that the AIW can only decode the
same signal that your TV can decode. That is, if you need a special Tuner
Box, then the AIW will not be able to independantly tune many channels.
For example, this is my situation:
I live in a neighborhood where my cable company sends Channels 1-22 over
normal cable (I can plug any Cable ready TV into a cable outlet and
receive channels 1-22). However, all channels above 22 are sent as Digital
Cable (whether the customer subscribes to digital cable or not). This
means that to tune in channel 23 (for example), I need to use their Cable
Box.
My AiW, plugged in to a cable outlet, can receive channels 1-22 as any
other TV can. However, to receive channels 23+, I must plug the output of
the Cable box into the input of the AiW. This restricts me to only being
able to watch the same program that the AiW is watching.
The same thing would happen with satellite, except that I don't think you
get the first 22 channels over plain Coax with satellite (i.e. anything
coming from the satellite must go through the converter box first).
The easy (but not cheap) way around this is to have a converter box
dedicated to the AiW.