[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Desktop-side RAM / CPU usage: while inactive? (If CPU usage isn't explicitly stated, then, it's always very close to 0%) and while active?: as has already been explained, all these MMRC's (except for only one of them, SnowCrash, which is a WinAmp plug-in and not a separate process) run as a separate process. In here, I've checked the memory and the CPU usage of this process while both inactive (there are no connected clients) and active (an active MM control session is in progress). As can clearly be seen, while the CPU usage is negligible with all titles, some expose VERY high memory usage. This may be an issue particularly on memory-constrained desktop computers (mostly notebooks).

Does a huge number of desktop-side songs cause problems?: Some non-optimized MMRC apps may, in cases, cause severe lockups when, say, trying to send a list of 5000 titles to a Pocket PC client. This may be caused by the Web browsers' inability to render larger HTML pages (older versions of Pocket Internet Explorer slow down at documents exceeding 200-300 kbytes (and crash at 400-500 kbytes) even when there are plenty of dynamic RAM memory available) or just the slowness of the engine itself. Fortunately, it's only SnowCrash that suffers from this problem, and only with the default skin. (You MUST change it to a PDA-optimized one - see the mini-tutorial in the "OS compliance" row!)

Controls group: here, I've elaborated on what remote control functionality is supported as far as basic functionalities (stop / start / next / previous and pause buttons and volume sliders / setting capabilities) are concerned (see Basic functionality (stop / start / next / previous / pause / volume)); whether you can freely seek in a song or not (see Freely seeking in a song?) and whether any hardware buttons (including the D-pad) can be utilized on your Windows Mobile device for even faster and/or "blind" access for the most common functions (Any PPC hardware buttons used in addition to D-pad? Is the D-pad utilized?).

Verdict group: this speaks for itself. In here, you get a full list of the most important pros / cons of each and every application and, finally, a some-sentence evaluation. Make sure you check out at least these three rows, if not the full chart!

3. Generic streaming questions

You may also want to know how you can encode and stream something to your PDA, assuming you don't want / can't access network shares to play the files directly on your handheld device, which isn't at all impossible (on the contrary - accessing shared files will work just great over any local TCP/IP network; for example, BT PAN or Wi-Fi, both p2p and not. It's, in general, only with remote (non-local) access that you will be interested in real streaming capabilities -or, with wildly incompatible or non-streamable (for example, some video) formats). Therefore, you will only want to read the rest of this short section if you want to know how streaming can be accomplished.

None of the titles have built-in streaming capabilities; not that it'd be of any problem because there're specialized tools to do the job. Of them, I recommend two free tools: Windows Media Encoder and SlimServer. (Note that there are several other, mostly SHOUTcast-like tools; the usage of most of them are like that of WME. Therefore, in here, I don't elaborate on them - if you understand how WME works with any desktop-side, remote controlled, media player, you will be able to stream using any other tool.)

3.1 Windows Media Encoder

(or any SHOUTcast-alike implementation) will work together with any MMRC application pretty well, based on the fact that you can directly control WHAT song is played back on your desktop with any MMRC app, while the additional streaming software just blindly transfers the currently played track over the wired / wireless connection to your PDA. WME is, streaming-wise, fully compatible with the built-in Pocket Windows Media Player; SHOUTcast-compatible desktop-side encoders, on the other hand, with third-party MP3 streaming / SHOUTcast-compatible clients like GSPlayer.

3.2 SlimServer 6.5.1 by Slim Devices (now: Logitech)

(the same on the desktop PC)

This, otherwise, excellent and very capable title (it fulfills almost every requirements: supports lyrics, album art etc., albeit, as with all the other Web-based clients, it lacks random file seeking support) is strictly for SHOUTcast-compliant streaming with iTunes playlist / database support, not for desktop-side playback remote control. As it uses SHOUTcast to broadcast media, it can prove much more useful to you.

Note that while the Web interface (it's fully Web-ized) promises to have a handheld-optimized version, the "optimized" version, in practice, doesn't differ much from the original version - it still uses frames. Fortunately, the frames can be dynamically resized any time.

Also see this thread on this question.

Comments, feedback, questions, flames are welcome, as usual!

(Cross-posted to: PPCT, MobilitySite, AximSite, BrightHand, FirstLoox, HowardForums, XDA-Dev.