Windows 8.1 as an HTPC OS

I must admit I have not fallen in love with Windows 8.XX yet, although it seems very fast and works very well. I was so used to the other Windows formats that it seems a matter of comfort, but in time, it will come to me.
No touchscreen here but it appears this will be great once acclimated.

I don't have a touchscreen either. Logitech makes a couple of good wireless keyboards for use with HTPCs.

I use 8.1 (8.0 prior), with XBMC and JRiver Media Center. It's reasonably stable, performance is great, but it's very kludgey for some applications. It's also Wife Friendly (tm), which is an important factor in having a solution.

Metro applications are terrible on a PC. Netflix has zero capability for remote control (unless you do a remote to keys function). It's decent on a Surface, or native touch screen, but it is a very poor substitute for the unified interfaces present on media players and consoles. Hulu suffers from the same implementation. Microsoft controls the implementation in these apps (as opposed to Netflix and Hulu). They are promoting the interface and it's a poor decision on their part.

I agree that many of the metro apps are limited.