Ill give mediaportal a go.

THe keyboard, for some reason requires direct line of sight despite the fact that is supposed to be radio based.... so I have to sit at some very funny angles and even then keys are missed when im typing quickly!

I have mine plugged into the front so have never had a issue with it tbh it does turn itself off after being idle for a bit, but the batteries last ages (2 months for the first set with quite a lot of use) so I tap alt a couple of times before starting to use it.

How about getting a USB extender cable to move the receiver to a better position???  

Ill give mediaportal a go.

THe keyboard, for some reason requires direct line of sight despite the fact that is supposed to be radio based.... so I have to sit at some very funny angles and even then keys are missed when im typing quickly!

Im using media portal too.... I have it running on my living room HTPC with a dual tuner freeview card in it, and then I run the TV client version on my bedroom PC where I get no digital reception.

It then allows me to watch digital tv in my bedroom, switch channels and timeshift with no loss in quality, so I can watch two different channels on any two computers in the house, and pause the TV! I was very impressed, I dont use it for anything else, so dont know how good the other features are.