In this new flat that I live in, my PC has ended up right next to my TV - close enough to reach with an HDMI cable, anyway. I've currently got a Raspberry Pi doing film-playing duties, but slowness, rewind/fast-forward not working, lack of Linux knowledge, etc etc.

So, is there any way of adding some kind of media player type thing to this Windows 8 PC, but have it only use my TV as it's screen, while the rest of the PC only uses my monitor as it's screen and ignores the TV until the media player application is run? Oh, and if the media player could run iPlayer and stuff like that, I could get away with not setting up this XBox, too.

Does that make sense?

XBMC + xbmc-iplayerv2 takes care of the media software and the iPlayer functionality.

I don't think you'll be able to isolate the two displays easily, but if you set your monitor as the default display, applications should launch there unless specifically told to launch elsewhere. XBMC can be told which display to start on in it's settings.

This thread seems to cover problems with the TV being switch off and programs jumping back to the other monitor (links in the post #10). It involves modifying a HDMI cable with some electrical tape to trick Windows into thinking it's always switched on.