Got everything up and running with a few bumps but nothing serious. Some items I figured out via trial and error and I thought I might share them.
Firstly the configuration though CINE is pretty awesome - it would take forever to dig through and find codes for everything, put them together, etc. That one piece probably saved an hour on configuration, great job! I think the biggest issue I created for myself was running the program before I had gone through and built a config.
I installed, copied the files as instructed, requested my key, got my key, installed my key. I then ran set affiliate and ran the program. Somewhere in there I had the issue with not having a proper config and ran the manual update - I think that actually caused more problems, but once I copied back the exes from the zip everything ran fine.
The computer I run this on is a laptop with an additional LCD monitor. I wanted the emulator to run full screen on the external monitor. It took a while of reading these forums and some playing around to see the part about clicking "advanced settings" on my display properties and then selecting 640 x 480 to get the program full screen. The other issue I had was that it was always launching on the wrong monitor. FINALLY I figured out the simple answer, just click on the display and use the arrow keys to move the window around. And lastly I had been force-quitting the app via task manager, but again simple is best, just hit the escape key and the program closes.
When we moved houses we got uverse which doesn't have any of the weatherscan or local weather stations that I loved to have on in my office in the background. I even checked for OTA signals to see if anything was available. I hunted around trying to find something which would just display a loop of weather and radar on my screen and finally found this - the answer to my issues. Thank you again!