A simple reply so the update to this threads is more visible to those possibly interested.
Interested in what?
The results of my testing between the encoded content starting with the 720P content recorded from streaming vs the 1080i content recorded from the cable.
Maybe no one cares, that is fine. I just said I was going to do some testing so I thought I would share the results for those that MIGHT be interested.
Maybe I am a small subset of users who actually re-encode my recordings for archiving and then keep them forever to watch with emby, but on the emby forums everyone would be asking for my results.
I am happy with streaming and Channels so it is a kudos to you too.
If you have something to report, why not just post it?
I updated the original post so if anyone new reads the thread they get the answer to my testing in the same post and do not have to read all the way through the thread looking.
Sorry, I didn't realize I was doing something wrong. 
To make maddox happy:
I did some testing with recording TCM movies, editing out the beginning and ending fluff and then encoding with HEVC using my custom settings, but because these are 720P and not 1080i I did not have to Inverse Telecine them.
The results are actually surprising to me but I am very happy. The recorded 720P content actually looks better played back on my TV than the 1080i or it is so close I can't tell. I parallel recorded the exact same movies both streaming and with my cable card. Then edited and encoded them then compared them playing back on my TV.
There are several all positive takeaways from this test. Editing the streamed content takes less time and the encoding takes way less time since I do not have to Inverse Telecine. The big difference is file size. The encoded streamed content is typically 35-40% smaller with the same or better quality than the same from 1080i source.
Examples for comarison below are just the video portion of the MKV file that results from encoding using my custom HEVC settings:
Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968) Streaming 720P - 905,917KB, Cable 1080i - 2,261,109KB
The Night Digger (1971) Streaming 720P - 415,134KB, Cable 1080i - 919,808KB
Just like when I encode a move recorded from cable and Blu-Ray the one from BR is always smaller because the better the source the smaller the resulting file once encoded. This is expected and presented here with the 720P vs the 1080i sources.
I cannot complain with these results and am happy. The only difference is that the TCM movies from cable come with 5.1 surround sound but since almost all content on this station is old enough to have never had original 5.1 surround audio it is faux 5.1 and manufactured and my 7.1 AV receiver can do the same thing in real time. The 720P encoded files are even smaller for this reason since they only have 1 stereo track AAC instead of a 1 stereo AC3 and 1 5.1 AC3 sound track. This is why for file size I compared only the video track.
I will be happily dumping my super expensive cable that has hundreds of useless channels that I pay a fortune for just because the 8-10 stations I watch are strategically placed on different tiers forcing many into the top tier with all channels so they can steal you blind. The few channels I am loosing going to streaming I really don't care about.
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If you are getting your TCM recordings from a TVE source, they stream it, and we get what they stream, which is true for any TVE source. Channels DVR has no control over what the source stream. We do not currently get better than stereo channel audio from any TVE source in my experience. As it turns out, most of my TV watching doesn't really need 5.1 or 7.1 channel audio to be acceptable.
If there was still a system in place that allowed me to use a cable card (for stations without DRM) with Channels DVR, I would use it over TVE any day, even at an inflated/negotiated cost. That said, if you still choose to use TVE, you might consider the reduced file size an advantage (albeit in stereo) if you want to archive as you probably don't need to re-encode to save hard drive space.
Sorry if I didn't understand the issue you were trying to convey.
I understand that TVE has no control of the stream source. When I first posted this I had been testing TVE for 1 day. I was new to it and I had never had a TCM recording in 720P to play with and I posted before I did any research or testing. It was just a reaction to I get 1080i with cable but only 720P with TVE.
The only reason I am testing this out is because my cable company OPTIMUM sucks in all ways and I am tired of constant signal glitches or interruptions due to their ancient infrastructure. I only had a short period last year between storms where I had no issues and that was a little over a month. Once they repaired it after the second storm it was back to crap. So I know the issue is in the above ground lines down the street, but they won't fix it or are too dumb to know how. I am tired of paying $225 for TV alone and it never fails when a rare important to me movie comes on I get signal issues. So screw them.
My TVE source is FREE so this is one of those things where the utility is extremely high even if there are some compromises. I really don't care about the 5.1 because like I stated, it is faux generated 5.1 to fill the room with sound but it is not true surround and my AV receiver can emulate this from a stereo source.
I agree with you the smaller file size is a plus for archiving but the bonus is there is no difference in quality of the video. I have watched some important movies to me to test this. I have no complaints but no, the as recorded file size is not acceptable because the average TVE stream is 4-6GB unedited and without re-encoding but 700MB to 1GB re-encoded with my HEVC settings and the quality is the same or not noticeable to me at least. Recorded 1080i is not twice as big but about 70% larger but there is a bigger space saving once re-encoded.
Plus my HEVC settings look spectacular on my TVs even with these small files so it is all good for me. I would keep cable if the signal was good but I am tire of paying for crap signal and saving almost $3700 a year is definitely better than keeping my useless cable and next year they will just raise the price claiming it is their yearly increase with no increase in service quality or more and better content so screw them.
10-4
The current landscape of media delivery can definitely be frustrating, but I'm glad you're on top of your specific situation.
I'm a classic film buff so all I really care about when archiving films is what I get from TCM especially since they are now playing more and more 80s and 90s content so I pretty much get my movie fixes for classic cinema here and with Netflix and other streaming sources there are endless newer movies to watch.
I currently have over 10K movies on my emby server archived, subbed, with artwork most of which are from TCM and some from other movie channels I USED to have but since all those sources started their own streaming deals they took their cable channels off air. I am a bigtime movie buff, that is all I watch TV wise when I sit down to actually watch and only having TCM as a source for recordings on cable anymore is not worth the money when TVE provides me the same in an actually better way.
I miss having MGM, SONY and HDNET movies channels as sources but those are all gone on cable an never coming back.
I'm interested in you settings, if you can share. 
Using Handbrake?
Fist of all I never use Handbrake. I tried it but being used to more customizable tools I only used it once. I use a program called FFmpeg Batch AV Converter because after extensive testing it is the best I have found and I worked with the developer to add some features such as you can queue up hundreds of files and walk away because reboots or power outages don't affect the program if you switch on Autorun.
The other benefit is you can add customizable columns and I have one for encoding parameters, so if you que up a bunch of files but not all use the same encoding parameters you can specify them in the extra column per file if need be.
The settings depend upon the source. so my default settings for content I record from cable TV are:
-map 0 -c:v hevc_nvenc -vf "fieldmatch,bwdif=mode=0:deint=1,decimate,format=yuv420p10le" -c:a copy -c:s copy -preset p7 -rc constqp -rc-lookahead 60 -spatial_aq 1 -temporal_aq 1 -nonref_p 1 -cq 26
But remember these settings are for Nvidia based graphics card hardware acceleration. It also performs Inverse Telecine type de-interlacing because that is what I have found almost all content on my cable to be. It copies all audio streams as is, no encoding, but that is easy to change. It also encodes in 10 bit color and this is something I switched to because it increases quality and minimizes or eliminates the possibility of "banding" in darker scenes which I find necessary since me and my wife love horror movies.
Now, remember if you are using hardware acceleration and an Nvidia card be careful if it is an overclocked model. If it is you need to use a software tweaking app to underclock the GPU and memory to stock or less. If you do not you get strange artifacts in the video files. This does not affect speed much but it is essential to avoid the artifacts.
For progressive content I use the following settings which are essentially identical to the previous without any de-interlacing:
-map 0 -c:v hevc_nvenc -vf "format=yuv420p10le" -c:a copy -c:s copy -preset p7 -rc constqp -rc-lookahead 60 -spatial_aq 1 -temporal_aq 1 -nonref_p 1 -cq 26
It took me a year of research and testing to settle on these settings and then they were updated when ffmpeg changes how it handles presets but I have been using them for over 4 years and am very satisfied with the results.
If you encode content from cable be aware that the "lookahead" setting can cause trouble if there is any hiccup in the signal when recording because it causes the audio and video to go out of sync. To correct this I had to switch to using VideoRedo TV Suite 6 for editing my TS files before encoding because it has the ability to Quickstream fix the issues. The program is no longer available or supported but you can find it if you look hard enough. 
If I forgot something or you need anything else let me know.
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Thank you for this very detailed answer.
I already purchased VideoRedo TV Suite 6 a few years ago before the creator passed away.
I will look into this when I have the time.
You are welcome. I had to find this all out on my own over the course of several years after many mistakes because no one did anything but answer my questions, but I didn't know about the ones to ask until I had more problems and more frustration.
I had a rather large library of recorded movies that I did not realize a certain percentage were garbage because the audio and video were out of sync, this only became an issue after I decided upon these encoding parameters but I did not know it until I started finding movies with sync issues when I went to watch them.
I had to go through my entire library and play every single movie and skip to the very end and see if the A/V was out of sync. There was no way to fix the already re-encoded movies so I had to hope I could re-record them later. But I also had to find a way to fix them but now I had to identify them and the only way was to play each movie and check them when they were encoded. Then if they were bad I had to use different software to try and fix them, but it was all hit or miss until I found VRD6. But I had to keep all my TS files until I verified them.
The benefit of VRD6 is it is a frame accurate editor and when it saves it basically runs the Quickstream Fix and corrects issues. If there are a lot of errors you can pull up the log and find the exact timestamps of where the errors are to check if it is watchable or something you should re-record.
This was a gamechanger but I still keep all my TS files until I verify them because every once in a while the A/V is still out of sync and I simply re-edit the file and it usually fixes it. But this is tedious and lots of work.
Using TVE as my recording source now means I have no signal errors so no glitches so there is nothing to fix, the files are smaller and of equal or better quality and I no longer have to keep the TS files just in case. So now this will become a fun hobby again rather than one I pay a lot of money for to be stressed out over because it never fails that my cable has signal issues on rare movies that are hard to find.
If you already have VRD6 that does not mean it will work unless it is currently installed, then it may not work either because the authentification server is no longer online so it may not work. If that is the case I'll give you a way to contact me and we can discuss things that might get me banned here, even though the developer gave me permission.
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One more thing if you are going to use VRD6 to edit cable TV TS files. In the TS profile you should go to the advanced tab and change only one setting. Under output change the mux rate to 19000. If not you will get a lot of PTS Underflows. Upping the mux rate cleans this up for error free files unless there is a real signal blip.
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Thank you for the tip but I don't think I will need to use VRD because my recordings are also from TVE. So I should be fine. 
If you have any questions just ask and I'll try to help. I may only be able to share my experience but I have been doing this long enough I think I have run into most if not all the pitfalls and eventually solved them or found an acceptable workaround.