Configuring First HTPC

[Chopmeister]

After 18 months or so of procrastinating, I have finally purchased a small NUC-type PC as my first HTPC. It has a Celeron N3150 processor, HDMI output, small (32GB) SSD as a boot drive, and a 750GB regular (laptop) drive for main storage, and Windows 10 preinstalled.

Since I have never played with a HTPC before, I have a few fairly novice-type questions, that I would welcome guidance and thoughts on.

The primary purpose will be to serve media off my NAS (using Kodi and PlexBMC) and to do HD Capturing. My HD sources will go into a HDMI matrix splitter, one output of which will go to the TV and the other to a Hauppauge HD PVR 2 (with an HDCP stripper before it). So I can basically route any HD source to either the TV and/or capture. I will also install a a USB tuner for over the air TV, although this is secondary compared to capturing.

It won't be used for long-term media storage. It will be watch and delete for most recordings or, if I want to keep them, they will be tossed to the NAS for long-term storage/access. Any heavy duty video processing will be done on my shiny new i7 desktop, not this unit.

The NUC has a media remote, and I also have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad. I'm also toying with later plugging in an adapter I have lying around that will let me use Xbox 360 controllers, and installing a couple of emulators (Mame, SNES, etc).

I already have all the hardware, and plan to do the setup when I have a week and a halfs vacation in December/January.

I want to stick with Windows for compatibility with some software, particularly the Hauppauge drivers, so that seems to rule out MythTV.

So, my main question is what software besides Kodi should I unstall to handle TV tuning and HD capturing. The two obvious choices appear to be NextPVR and Mediaportal - and I would be interested in views as to which of these may be best for my purposes, and whether I have missed any other obvious candidate.

My second question is whether anyone has any experience with setting up NZ Freeview on a HTPC, and can recommend a TV guide scraper and point me to a guide on how to set it up.

My third question is whether Comskip (or similar) can be integrated to auto-magically flag commercials in recordings so that they can be skipped, on a box of this spec and for NZ Freeview.

And, for the avoidance of doubt, I reiterate that I have decided to stick with Windows at this point, so "you should install Linux...." comments aren't really what I'm looking for. Subject to this, any advice and thoughts about a good setup are appreciated.

[usually_quiet]

I don't use Kodi, but sometimes use NextPVR by itself. It works well with Hauppauge's HD-PVR capture device product line and supports using xmltv scrapers, but I don't know which are best outside the US and Canada. If you need to control a set-top box, from what I have read, the HDPVR 2's IR receiver blaster is hard to configure outside WinTV. You may be better off with an MCE IR Receiver/Blaster.

Comskip, MCEBuddy and the like don't work very well, in my opinion. I try automatic commercial removers now and then, but I'm always disappointed with the results.