[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Connectivity group: this is where the real content begins. In this group, I've elaborated on how the given MMRC app connects to the desktop (TCP/IP or serial/native Bluetooth) and, if it uses TCP/IP, does it support passwords (to make it impossible for intruders coming from the external network) and multicast discovery (to make it far easier for Windows Mobile clients to find controllable desktop(s)).

Type: a quick summary of the connection type

If TPC/IP is supported, multicast discovery (incl. true WM5 AS connections, as opposed to (restricted) pre-WM5 ones)): see the above discussion of multicast discovery. Also note that it also works under WM5 / WM6 through plain ActiveSync connections (even over USB ) when operated in the default LAN mode, unlike under previous operating systems, where multicast discovery doesn't work and you must enter the IP address of the desktop PC, 192.168.55.100, into your Windows Mobile client. Please also read this article on the differences between the two networking approaches under WM5 / WM6 if not sure.

(Even remote) IP address w/o multicast discovery?: this is the opposite of multicast discovery: can you directly enter any IP address into the client?

WMP playlists group: WMP supports both manually created and automatic playlists. In this test, I've checked how the tested applications support this functionality.

Does it allow for local playlist creation / editing?: advanced MMRC apps allow for local playlist editing and even creation. This is a hugely useful feature when you prefer editing your playlists from, say, your bed. In here, I've elaborated on this feature, packed with screenshots to give a feel how it's done in practice.

Synchronizing the created / edited playlists back to the desktop?: if you do edit / create your playlists on your Windows Mobile device, you will also want to synchronize them back to your desktop so that they instantly become available for the desktop player too, and not only from the client. In here, I've listed whether automatic resynchronization works flawlessly.

Additional features / goodies group: in here, I've listed the album art, ID3 tags and lyrics support, searching capabilities and equalizer support.

Cover (album art) in the same directory / embedded in the file (if WMP hasn’t already extracted the thumbnail to become a directory-level one)? Does the latter, when supported, override the album-level one with it?:

Basically, there are two ways of storing album arts with a given song OR an album: either posting one art for all the songs in the same album (on the directory level) or embedding an image (or, for that matter, several of them) in the song file itself (see this official Microsoft tutorial explains how you can add album art to a given music title on the latter). Both have advantages and disadvantages and the players' ability to notice and render these images are wildly different, particularly on the Pocket PC.

In addition, some plays make it possible to consider the (alphabetically) first JPG file they run into in the same directory the album art in the same album.

In this test, I've tested whether these images are correctly rendered on the PDA (if at all).

MP3 ID3v1 / ID3v2 Tags?: is the player able to (locally!) display MP3 ID3v1 / ID3v2 tags? (Note that I haven't explicitly tested the ASF (WMA) ID compliance of the players because it's far less widely used than MP3 ID3.)

MP3/WMA tag lyrics support? If yes, synchronized lyrics? Note that WMP only supports tag-based lyrics, not file-based (.txt / .lrc) ones.: Most modern compressed music formats support inline lyrics storage, even at two languages.

Note that not even the latest (11) version of WMP support external LRC and TXT files and its synchronization features only allow for line-based lyrics synchronization, not word-based one (unlike advanced LRC-based lyrics). This means you in no way can achieve for example Karaoke-like effects: on Windows Mobile, you won’t get support for the latter, except for KarPocket and the LRC-compatible Lyrics Magic.

In this test, I've embedded some lyrics in an MP3 file, made sure it's correctly rendered my WMP and, then, tested the applications to see whether they also render them on the Windows Mobile client.

The Genre / Album / Artist etc.-based sorting of the WMP media library on client? If not taken from WMP, does it try to parse the sound file filenames / tags to find out more?: does it also use the Genre / Album / Artist-based sorting of WMP, or, does it discard it and/or try to invent it itself. The latter is a big plus with desktop players that do NOT support (implicit, automatic) Genre / Album / Artist-based sorting.

Video on the desktop PC?: a decent remote controller should be able to remote control video playback. This, unfortunately, isn't so evident as music playback as many players use plug-ins running hidden and, therefore, if you play back videos, they aren't necessarily shown. In this row, I've elaborated on these questions.

Searching for a given title?: a decent MMRC app should make it possible to run (even partial) searches for a given title. Unfortunately, very few of them allow for this.

Battery and desktop friendliness, possible problems and bottlenecks group: especially with clients that are, in cases, up and running for several hours, it's of extreme importance to have as low battery consumption as possible. In addition to selecting the best communication form (preferring Bluetooth to Wi-Fi whenever possible) to achieve this, it's also very important that you use a client that doesn’t use the CPU when it's not necessary.

Unfortunately, many clients scroll the title of the currently played song on the screen of the mobile device, which may result in excess CPU usage all the time, resulting in a heavily decreased battery life (assuming you, otherwise, use a battery-friendly way to communicate; for example, Bluetooth. If you use Wi-Fi, it'll account for the majority of the power consumption and, then, the CPU usage factor won't be that important. That is, the benchmark data given here should only act as a showstopper when deciding for a particular MMRC solution when you otherwise would have excellent battery life, and even 10% CPU usage makes an articulated difference).

In this group, I've examined mostly these questions. Note that with the titles sporting excess CPU usage because of (mostly) the title scrolling, I've also run CPU usage benchmarks when minimized or when switched to dialogs where the scrolling wasn't visible. With titles that, in this case, get rid of the CPU cycle-consuming scrolling algorithm, it may be worth considering always switching to these (mostly setup) dialogs or minimizing the application when it's not strictly needed to achieve (also depending on some other factors; most importantly whether you use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) substantially better results.

I've also paid special attention to the desktop-side server component to see how much memory it consumes and how much CPU time it uses. As you'll see, there are some desktop server components that "go rogue" and consume even hundreds of Megabytes of meagre RAM!

Built-in screen off; if not, is it compatible with system-level button-assigned or Start menu-based tools?: while switching off the screen, unfortunately, has (in most cases) nothing to do with the CPU usage of a given application (that is, an application that has excess CPU usage because it, say, constantly scrolls the title of the song on the local mobile screen won't stop chewing through the battery if you, in some way, power down the screen), it's still nice to know whether it's possible to do this at all with either some kind of a built-in screenoff functionality or a system-level one with, say, assigned to a hardware button. This way, you can also extend the battery life.

Can the PPC (and, therefore, the connection) be suspended while remote controlling?: if you know you surely won't need to control your desktop equipment for some time, can you safely suspend, and, then, later resume your handheld device - that is, can the MMRC app just "pick up" work where you've left it at? Fortunately, all of them can. That is, the playback of the "Now playing" list will not be stopped when you power down your Windows Mobile device.