I run 4 WMC machines with Quad tuners - that's up to (but normally not) 16 channels that can be simultaneously recording, 4 to each local machine - lots of redundancy.
I think your point is about the clash if you run WMC and JRiver on the same machine - yes point well noted.
I have some 3000 (5Tb) wtv files on 4 WMC machines and a standard file server which has no specific software (just a file server share- which is what we like for an FS).
All machines can see all recordings immediately they are finished because WMC uses a peer 'library' indexing db on each machine - there is no single point of failure if for instance the file server went off line.
Neither is there any special routine, just peer network shares which any instance of WMC, or anything else, can play directly.
I am still getting my head around JRiver's mechanisms and am looking for the Wiki on Library server as this is advocated, but it does look like a single point of failure - but I need to read further.
Also I need to do be able to navigate all this from the 10ft view (Theatre view) with remote not mouse/kboard/desktop.
Also 10k photos and loads of audio - so library handling is very important - so her indoors says