Thanks for the screenshot, Yaobing. That helps to make it clear what it'll look like when I get it all set up.
I realize that my desire for a "unified" EPG might not be totally clear to people who haven't used one similar to what I'm used to (and to what I believe nwboater is looking for), so I think I should explain further a bit. I might be reading the situation wrong, and overexplaining something that is quite clear. If so, sorry, ignore me. But if not, maybe this will help...
It lists programs per channel. "5 WMAQ" is an STB channel, i.e. cable box fed into HD PVR, whereas "5-1 WMAQ" is the corresponding ATSC channel.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. I was
also worried that the different guides would actually be on different pages (ie: not listed or "sorted" together), but I suspected that wasn't the case. Your screenshot confirms that it is not. What I was talking about is perfectly illustrated by your screenshot, though... You have two lines, which point to two different tuning devices, that list the same exact program data all the time. They aren't just two channels that happen to be airing the same thing at the same time, but which sometimes have different programming. They are literally two different representations of the same channel, on different physical hardware devices.
If properly configured, this does not happen on SageTV. Ever.
To give you a real world example, I'll use my current setup in SageTV. I have five distinct tuners in my system (though only three that can be used totally independently because they share hardware):
1. HD-PVR connected to my digital cable box
2. HVR-2250 Digital QAM/ATSC Tuner #1
3. HVR-2250 Analog NTSC Tuner #1
4. HVR-2250 Digital QAM/ATSC Tuner #1
5. HVR-2250 Analog NTSC Tuner #1
(In the list above, 2+3 share hardware, so if one is "in-use" the other is unavailable. Likewise, 4+5 share a totally separate set of hardware.)These five devices can each have their own "channel lineups", if you want to, but I have three lineups configured: an analog one, a QAM one, and a HD-PVR/Cable Box one).
However, the channels are mapped such that you don't ever see duplicates. Each "channel object" in SageTV is ultimately mapped via three independent items:
1. Logical Channel
2. Physical Channel
3. Station
The Physical Channel is the simplest. This is the actual channel that the computer "tunes" the hardware tuner to in order to display the channel. This tuner might be an external set-top box controlled by an IR blaster, it might be a ATSC or QAM channel, or it might be the analog tuner.
The Logical Channel is basically the sort order. It is a "virtual channel" type of object that you can use to make different channels
combine in the guide, and sort in different orders. This is by-default set to match the physical channel, but can be changed arbitrarily to any number you want (or to no number at all, and then they sort to the "bottom" of the list in the guide grid).
The Station is the guide data source. This is the ABC, HBO East, ESPN2, etc. You match these to your "channel objects" and then this is the guide data they use and display.
What this means in practice is this:
On my system, I have three separate "versions" of my normal local FOX affiliate. I could have more, but I have some edited out. These are:
channel 81-1 on my QAM tuners
channel 4 on my NTSC tuners (analog cable)
channel 704 on my digital cable box (the HD version of FOX on my digital cable). The digital cable box also has a Standard Def version of FOX, that is channel 4, but I have that edited out of my list. If you're going to use the HD-PVR, and I get the channel in HD, you're going to use the HD version.
All of these show up only once in the guide as channel 4, once. They all share the exact same guide data, and are set to the same "logical channel", so they only show once in the guide. If I scroll through the grid, and pick that channel, and hit "watch now", it decides which tuner to use based on the tuner priorities:
1. QAM
2. HD-PVR
3. Analog
Since the analog and QAM tuners share hardware, in this case, it will never be recorded on the analog tuners unless one of the digital ones is broken or otherwise disconnected. If I start playing something, and both of the QAM tuners are busy, it'll tune my cable box to 704 and use the HD-PVR.
For a different example, I have HBO. HBO is not available via QAM, but is on the analog cable feed (only the "regular" HBO, not any of the "special" ones, but it is still there). HBO is channel 750 on my Digital Cable box (again, the HD feed is the only one I care about), and it is channel 21 on my analog tuners. These are mapped to logical channel 750 in my guide. I could have just as easily used channel 21 as the logical channel (or 387 or 68952 if I wanted). But, using 750 grouped them nicely. If I scroll through my guide and tune to HBO (again, only listed once in the grid), it'll tune my digital cable box to channel 750 and start playing. If the HD-PVR is already in-use, then it'll tune to channel 21 using one of the two analog tuners.
Some channels in my guide are available across multiple tuners like that, and then some are only available on one. For example, the only version of the Reelz channel I have is on the digital cable box, not in HD (channel 121). I can still remap these to different logical channel numbers if I want them to "group" or "sort" differently.
The only thing about this system I don't like is the logical channels. They are really a bit of a kludge to allow you to use the familiar "type in a two or three digit set of numbers to change to a different channel" UI to a "dumb TV" that we all remember from our childhoods (or most of us, except the real youngins). It would make more sense to really be able to get rid of the channel numbers altogether, and just tune directly to the individual "stations" (HBO, WABI, PBS, etc)... They are CERTAINLY necessary in SageTV, though, mostly to allow you to quickly skip through multiple "pages" of the grid to get close to the channel you want, when picking from hundreds of stations. But that's more of a flaw in the 10-foot only, remote control interface "grid" system they have, than a need to manually input channels. I usually don't remember that HBO is 750. I usually just type 700, which gets me close, and then page down in the grid to find the one I want.
Standard View in MC would not have that limitation, but I think anything you do remotely "grid like" in Theater View (in the future) would probably have some of these limitations... But maybe not! Maybe you could group the channels into "folders" and then you'd drill down into them via Theater View! In any case, I have no need to know or care that some guy at Time Warner's office in Bangor decided that in my area HBO was going to be on "channel #750, channel #160, and channel #21". The numbers are irrelevant, and just a "sorting and quick-change" hack as far as I'm concerned. We don't use TVs that way anymore, and we certainly don't use HTPC DVR software that way, so why are they designed to emulate the clunky behavior of analog television sets?
So, what don't I like about your system? That if I'm deciding to record a show from now on, I have to decide which tuner type I want to use to record it. I can't just say "record this show on this station, I don't care what tuner you use, just follow my priorities to use the best one possible for that particular channel at that particular moment." There aren't two copies of channel 5 "logically" in your screenshot. There only are physically. This could also be a good thing, in some edge cases though... One thing I do "fiddle with" on Sage occasionally is manually "locking" certain favorites (what Sage calls subscribed shows) to certain tuners. Otherwise, sometimes it decides to record a particular show on HBO using an analog tuner, when it could have used the HD-PVR instead an hour later when the conflicting show repeated. So, the fact that your system is manual could be handy sometimes, but mostly not (and that's mostly because Sage's UI stinks).
Now.... I realize that is NOT how MC works currently. I'm still going to try it. The single-list is close enough that I'm willing to give it a go. But I wanted to explain exactly what I meant by a "unified EPG". That's what I meant:
There is only one HBO, regardless of how many tuners I have and what physical channels they use to get it.