Interesting. Well, I’m obviously a bit behind. A few versions ago, I could read SAMBA files on macOS using Paragon. Thanks for the tip...I’ll investigate further. In the past two years I primarily use my iPad for everything...not often that I utilize iMac anymore. 
I've been using Mac's for about 8 years and that whole time they've supported SMB. SMB is pretty universal.
I stand corrected, I must be using SMB (Linux NAS) to MrMC (been so long since setup 
)
Based on foregoing posts, it appears that you can use SMB on MrMC set up for file playback (after adding the EDL Hack command in Channels). As Channels adds the edl file to the video location, no other programs nor H/W necessary.
Do we all agree?
I just need to figure out how to configure SMB in MrMC and on my Mac
On your Mac go to System Preferences, then Sharing. Put a check mark in File Sharing, then add the Channels folder with the + button. Set up the user on the right of the that, and in MrMC use those user credentials to connect to your SMB share on your Mac.
And this is why I want to stick with Channels. 
Thank you for saving me a couple hours of research!
I want to confirm I'm understanding everything.
With the SMB setup, I am not using Plex at all. If I want to see my mkv files in MrMC I need to move them somewhere within the Channels folder. Once I've done that MrMC will aggregate all files into the app and they will all be visible in the app.
Is that correct?
You can set MrMC to also add movies from the current location which contains your mkv files.
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You can share more than the channels folder if you have other files you want MrMC to pickup. Moving external files into the channels folder might not be easier than just setting up that folder to share and have MrMC scan that.
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I'm having a little trouble on the MrMC side of things. Under SMB Client I've entered the WINS Server IP address and the workgroup name. I'm missing a step here that allows me to enter my login info for the User. Their wiki page is not very helpful.
I think I've got it.
Since MrMC is a fork of Kodi, I'm assuming the configuration is similar. From the interface, you would indicate your username and password as smb://[user[:pass]]@ipaddress[:port]/share. I imagine you can also indicate your library paths using the advancedsettings.xml file: https://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings.xml
Thanks for all the help. I have a text list of the videos in my shared folders. That's a good start.
I misspoke about the text file location for defining your library components: https://kodi.wiki/view/Sources.xml
(I haven't used Kodi in a while, so I'd forgotten what files I modified or copied into my clients to get them all using the same shared SQL database and NAS shares for files. After thinking about it, I think I used a combination of both, so this is the other main file used to define library sources in Kodi. Again, this is shared with understanding that MrMC still retains this code from Kodi; but they may have changed it ...)
To me, the MrMC interface is a little on the clunky side and doesn't always work. I don't think it will work as a solution for the less-than-technical spouse. I'm going to give the mini pc and MCEBuddy a try. I'll let the Channels DVR handle the recordings, and then I'll have MCEBuddy remove the commercials with comskip and drop the new file in my Plex folder. That way everything will be in one place and is easily accessed.
That's how I handle my set up, except I don't cut the commercials. I let MCEBuddy scan the edl file generated by Channels, change the container type to MKV without re-encoding, and add the chapter markers to the file. That way if Comskip cuts out some of the show, I don't lose it, I can just rewind it in Plex.
Once in Plex, I have it set to add Thumbnails to each Chapter marker so you can quickly see where you're going and jump to that location on the Apple TV.
Is there a MacOS version of a program or set of scripts that mimics the MCEBuddy process. It would be nice to repackage recordings to auto skip on AppleTV. Thanks.
Is there a single keypress in Plex that will allow you to jump to the chapter marker?