Welcome to the forums! If you watch a lot of TV shows this setup will save you an enormous amount of time.

Well, I'd say that unfortunately something will have to give. Getting USB tuners/PVR working on linux would be a massive pain in the arse, if possible at all. On the flip side a Windows OS wont run off a USB stick.

Is there a reason you need to run off a USB stick? There's room for 4 storage drives plus an OS drive in the Optical drive bay (or an SSD and an optical drive - side note: insanely priced £33 SSD today!).

I think the only realistic and supportable option for you is a Windows OS (whatever you have an licence to really or experience with as most would do) on an internal HD.

Phew! I've just gone through the setup procedure as detailed in this post. To be honest, I had never even heard about Astraweb, NZBMatrix, Sickbeard, SABnzdb, CouchPotato or XBMC until I found a good deal on a HP N40L microserver!!!

I think the only thing lacking from this tutorial is exactly how all the software functions together (from a complete newcomer point of view). I have run through the installation procedure and everything apart from notifications in SickBeard seems to be working - it gives me a "Test notice failed to localhost:8082" error when I test - any ideas?

Basically, my system is, at the moment, empty. I have no films, shows, music or pictures on any of the drives. Once I am familiar with how all this software works together, I will be bringing over another 2TB disk that has all my own photos, music and ripped DVD films.

Now I just need to know how I find tv programs and shows that I am interested in and would like to download.

My assumptions and questions are as follows:-

1) I search through NZBmatrix for films/shows I am interested in. Do I then just add these to an NZB queue? Then what? Or don't I need to manually use NZBmatrix at all? Is NZBmatrix just a service that lists all available films/shows/apps/etc, and sickbeard/couchpotato just use that database to find stuff?

2) If I want to find a particular film, I can search on CouchPotato for the film. When it becomes available, it will auto download with SABnzdb - is that right? These are then thrown out to XBMC, correct?

3) Sick Beard - I use this to search for tv shows that I would like. It then searches NZBmatrix (?) for them and downloads when it finds them, renaming and organising the resultant files. These are then thrown out to XBMC, correct?

Apologies for the 'newbiness' of my questions. I am digging around daily to work all this stuff out myself, but this forum has been a big help. An awful lot to take in.

Thanks Leon.

So really, in essence, it is as simple as this (once setup correctly of course!!):

1) use CouchPotato to search for MOVIES I want - sabnzdb will download them
2) use Sickbeard to search for TV SHOWS that I want - sabnzdb will download them
3) The setup within both CP and SB will push the downloaded MOVIES/TV SHOWS to XBMC

Is that about right?

Now I need to spend some time looking at XBMC as in its 'vanilla' state, there are now categories for MOVIES or TV SHOWS. There is just the VIDEOS button with 'files' and 'add-ons' as sub menus.

Yep thats exactly right... simple isn't it (once its working lol).

The first thing I would recommend for XBMC is go into settings > appearance > Skin and change it to something better (I use Aeon Nox). There are a few more options and things are laid out a bit easier.

Coolio. I think I am finally 'getting it'!

With regards to XBMC, I have installed the skin you suggest, though version 3 as version 2 didn't seem to be available when I selected it. Now it has a TV Shows and Movies category, so that seems better. I didn't realise it was actually a skin that 'unlocked' these kind of menus (remember, I am coming from a WMC background, so everything you need is there by default).

Can I just check something - when I click on Movies, I am presented with 'files/playlists/video add ons' text buttons. Only when I click on 'files' does a further option of 'movies/add videos...' appear. I then have to click on 'movies' to see my one and only film listed, which is Gladiator (2000). I then click on this and am presented with another text button 'Gladiator.mkv'. When I finally click on this, the movie begins.

I assume there is a better way whereby I can click on the initial MOVIES button on the home page and then just see all the cover art, rather than going through all the text buttons as described above.

silly question - I have CouchPotato running, but I set it not to open in a web browser when W7 boots up. I can see the processis running, but how do I get up the CouchPotato config page manually???

http://localhost:5000/
http://<IP Address>:5000/
http://<Hostname>:5000/

That is assuming you left the port as the default 5000

D'oh!

Did you go for the unlimited DSL package on Astraweb?

Hmm I'm not sure then, I've never had SAB not max any connection I've been on (upto about 7000kb/s is fastest I've got my hands on).

There are 3 places to set the download speed within SAB. 1 is in the general config page, 1 in the scheduler and the other is on the download queue. I know that the scedualer and the download queue speeds are linked however I'm not sure if the one in the general tab overrides them both? Confirm that at least both the speed in general config and the box at the top of the download queue are set to something high.