There is a better way.
Unfortunately, I don't do it, so I can't provide details. I couldn't find the specific references in the
Release Notes either, so I can't say for sure in what version the functionality was added.
Anyway, I'm fairly certain that you can now use a local tuner attached to a Client, while it is acting as a Client to a remote MC Server. You might need to search around in the Television forum and look at pinned threads, plus search the Wiki. There was a lot of discussion about it in the forum at one stage.
Oh, wait. Here we go. "Options > Television > Advanced > Allow setup on clients".
25.0.11 (3/13/2019)
5. Changed: On a client with TV channels and EPG setup enabled, the status line in Standard television view will show both the server status and the client status.
7. Changed: Automatic background EPG loading setting is no longer ignored on clients if "
Allow setup on clients" option is on.
9. Fixed: MC did not wake up to perform television recording on clients.
15. Fixed: The status of currently recording TV shows were not consistently displayed across the client-server network, i.e. a show recording on a client was not flagged as such on the server, and vice versa.
25.0.10 (2/25/2019)
7. NEW: Television channels and EPG can be set up using a client, with the results saved on the server.
8. Changed: When resetting all TV channels from a client, the channel order setting on the server is reset.
10. NEW: Television tuners on clients are allowed to be used for recording shows to server library.