I've only been using Channels DVR for a few years, but I've been collecting recordings from many, many sources ever since using ATi All-in-Wonder video cards in my PCs back in the '90s. For years I was saving recordings from our ReplayTVs, capturing Comcast DVR and HD-VCR shows over firewire to transport stream files, and in 2008 switched over to TiVo when they finally provided TiVo-To-Go functionality. I've also got many thousands of wtv recordings from Windows Media Center using HDHR tuners and many recordings ripped from my digital disc media.
Most of my viewing of these recordings over the last decade has been via PC or tablet, and my own folder structure was easier to use than any of the media managers I tried. I typically use VLC on my PC or MX Player on my phone or tablet - even to view most of the recordings made with Channels DVR when I'm at home. However, Channels DVR functionality has me transitioning to doing more viewing while traveling or in the house on a TV, so I'm slowly bringing more and more into the library.
All that to say that I'm just trying to merge the media I would like to manage in the Channels library the best I can, so most of the files I'm moving out of the Storage Folder(s) are joining many other non-Channels recordings for off-line organization purposes - which is why they're landing in Local Content folders.
I know it's not ideal, but I was hoping that if I had almost every Friends episode recorded in WMC already, that I could have Channels DVR only record the ones I didn't have and be able to keep them ALL together in one place.