MC19 includes a new feature, Television channel stacking.
The feature is useful for people using multiple types of tuners (i.e. ATSC, QAM, STB, OpenCable, or outside of North America, DVB-T, DVB-C, DVB-S, STB etc.).
Channels of different types that show the same programming contents can be grouped (stacked) so only one channel will be shown in UI (EPG).
Right now, you can only manually stack channels. In the future, we will offer GUI for the task and may offer some limited automation, but my sense is manual intervention will always be needed. The task of manually stacking channel may be very time-consuming, especially for people with large number of channels (with cable service for example). - GUI was implemented in 19.0.84. Tools > Options > Television > Group Channels...
Note that in some channel types (cable or satellite for instance) multiple channels may carry the same contents. For example, my cable provider serves my local NBC ATSC channel on channel 5, as "WMAQ", and on channel 188, as "WMAQ-DT". These channels should not be stacked. If MC can not find a tuner at a given time for channel 5, it can not find a tuner for channel 188 either, and the converse is true. So one of these channels should simply be hidden and never used.
Here are the steps to take to accomplish channel stacking.
0. Make sure all tuners have their corresponding channels available in MC, i.e. make sure you scan all channels (over-the-air, cable, CableCARD etc.)
1. Hide all channels that you know you will never use, including the duplicate channels mentioned above.
2. Create a "TV channels" smart list.
The instructions are here. Make sure "Keywords" and "TV Tuner Input Type" columns are shown in the smartlist so you can easily identify the channels.
3. Select all channels that show the same contents. For example, "5-1 NBC5-DT" (ATSC), "5-1 E1_2 NB" (QAM), "188 WMAQ-DT" (OpenCable), and "188 WMAQ-DT" (Set-Top-Box). Right-click on the one that you would like to be the stack top, and choose Stacks > Stack. Refresh the smartlist and you will see only the stack top is shown, as the stack is collapsed by default. You can expand or collapse the stack any time, but either way in any EPG view only the stack top will show up.
4. Repeat 3. for all other channel groups.
Note 1:
For now, there is no way for you to order the channels in a stack, other than choosing which channel to be on the stack top. Each time you choose a program to play or to record, MC will walk through the channels in a stack one by one, starting with the stack top, to find a tuner that is suitable. In the future perhaps some ways of ordering the channels should be provided. - Fixed in 19.0.92
Note 2:
Conflict resolution does not work correctly with channel stacking. You will get false conflict warnings as you schedule recordings. I am working on it. -- Fixed in 19.0.11