At last, I reached my happy end-state today, so I thought I'd share what I set up!
First off are my sources:
Of note, I am now making a direct connection to my HDHR and I set up a standalone Channels Docker Container to just be a source for TVE. With these two things, my main Channel server will no longer be pulling double-duty both serving and playing/recording content. Other than that, I have a good collection of FAST providers with Plex, Pluto, Samsung TV+, Tubi, and Distro, plus the PBS docker because everything around these parts is on low VHF and I don't have an antenna for that, and finally the excellent EPlusTV docker linear option for getting NFL Network.
I then set my priority among the sources:
Basically, I have a preference for OTA over streaming, things with Gracenote guide data over XML-only guide data, and then finally length of guide data or stability of service.
Generally, no matter the source, I assigned all the same stations to a single parent, getting just one resulting station in the end:
However, there were occasions where I wanted separate ones for similar and even same stations. For instance, I receive ABC from two different markets on OTA plus one of them over TVE. I decided I wanted all of them as backups to each other:
Since I opted to connect to my HDHR directly, Channels would not be providing the Gracenote IDs unless I manually mapped stations. In order to avoid that, I put Gracenote ID overrides in for my OTA stations (as well as put in my own logos to make them be unique looking):
And despite my stated preferences for source order above, there were a few instances in which I wanted to use a different one. This most notably came up where my OTA reception isn't the best or the streams are actually higher quality:
With all my child assignments complete, I ended up keeping just 19% of available stations between all my sources, with nearly 70% of ignored entirely and another 11% totally redundant.
Based on those sources, I ended up with three playlists to load into Channels:
And I did exactly that, putting my Gracenote (MPEG-TS) as my top priority since that contains my OTA and streaming PBS stations, which I want to be thought of first over the TVE stations in the Gracenote (HLS) lineup when it comes to recording.
As you can see, I also chose not to put my Chrome Capture for Channels and Live Streams (mostly Kister YouTube streams) into PLM because I didn't see any value to do so. They are all one-off stuff, so I don't believe I'll ever have to use manual management and merging multiple children with parents. However, if I change my mind, I can always upload an m3u file:
Other than that, I do have the EPlusTV's Events option because that also didn't make sense to me to integrate into PLM as it is already doing everything it is ever going to need to with just a direct Channels connection; there is no need to put in an unnecessary middleman. Then, despite using a CURL command to remove my HDHR from Channels, it came back anyway, so I just made sure to remove its guide provider and disabled it as a source (a new option as of just a few days before writing this, how serendipitous!).
Then, to finalize my preferences for recording, I used the favorite button to make stations I have multiple version of be first choice:
All together, along with certain settings I made in my passes, got me the order for recording that I desired:
Beyond just recording, I took the opportunity to change my Channel Collections. They are now broken up by category instead of one giant list like I had before:
And that's about it! Using a mix of PLM and Channels tools has gotten me to finally be truly satisfied with my station management and has made it much easier for our household going forward!
You can already make whatever changes you want to Parent stations en masse and then click save.
