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Do you use your desktop Windows PC, Mac or Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) desktop computer to play back music or videos? Would you like to be able to remote control the playback from your Pocket PC like on an infrared remote controller unit? Don't you like the idea of purchasing another hardware remote controller for the PC to be able to do this, even when this only means a new sound- or video card with a dedicated hardware infrared remote controller? You don't want to use short-range infared controllers where line-of-sight is a must but, for example, would like to control your equipment from anywhere of your house through, for example, your Wi-Fi wireless network? For example, you're sitting in the kitchen and would like to make the desktop computer-controlled speakers in the kitchen a bit louder or temporarily switch off the music because you have an incoming call? It's just a screentap in your Windows Mobile-based handheld device. Now, imagine what you would need to do without having any kind of a remote control facility - you'd need to go to your (MCE) PC and there do what you need.

Interested? Read on - you'll certainly find this roundup highly useful!

There are two main kinds of Windows Mobile -> desktop PC remote control applications: full-fledged desktop access applications (VNC, TSC, RDP, LogMeIn etc.) and strictly multimedia control applications. As far as the former are concerned, I've thoroughly reviewed all the, on Windows Mobile, available solutions in the Remote Desktop Access Bible. You will NOT want to use these applications to control your media players - there are much better, multimedia-specific applications for this task. There is simply no point in using a fully-fledged, full desktop controller application for multimedia control.

Note that there is a third class of Windows Mobile remote control applications; that of "simple" infrared (IR) remote controller applications I've reviewed in the Infrared Remote Control Bible. As they don't have many of the advantages (for example, lack of need for line of sight; the lack of heavy dependence on the CPU type - most titles don't support the TI and the Samsung CPU's - and the quality / range of the built-in infrared unit; the lack of one-way control only etc.) of the "real" multimedia remote controller (MMRC for short) apps and the only real point of using them is controlling "non-smart" audiovisual devices like stand-alone DVD players and amplifiers, I don't pay any attention to them in this review. Please make sure you do check out the above-linked review for more information on them.

Note that there're some other, similar, but desktop-only roundups; see for example this German language Wiki entry for some additional, desktop-side apps.

1.1 What can you control?

With all the reviewed (available) MMRC apps,

you can control, at least, the basic functionality of the desktop-side player; that is, Stop / Start / Next title / Previous title / Pause and the volume slider.

you see (at least - with more advanced remote controllers, you also see the album art or even the lyrics of) the title and artist of the current title (particularly if it has a filename already conveying this information - the simplest applications only display the filename of the currently played title or, in very few cases - see for example PPC Tablet Remote Control Suite - don't display anything, not even the filename.)

some kind of a playlist; if not your desktop-side, pre-created and automatic playlists (as is the case with for example WMP), then, at least, a local playlist you can create on your PDA my individually adding arbitrary titles to the "Now Playing" list. Note that very few titles lack this functionality; a notable example of these is the free and not really recommended SnowCrash.

one or some desktop-side multimedia player. In most cases, it's Windows Media Player 9 or later (WMP for short). The second most widely supported player is the well-known WinAmp and the third is Apple's iTunes. Very few MMRC apps support other players or other applications like Microsoft PowerPoint. Support for the latter may turn out to be pretty useful if you plan to control your PowerPoint show from your Windows Mobile handheld.

With most players, there are a lot of additional goodies they offer to the user; in the next section, I list them.

1.2 Two-way communication

As opposed to most "standard" IR controllers, PDA's have a display on their own. This means they will at least display the file name of the currently played title and some kind of a song list, from where you can see what the next song is. This means you don't have to see on the desktop PC's screen what the next song will be. Again, imagine your controlling multimedia playback from your kitchen, even some 30-40 metres away from your desktop computer - you see the advantages of this, don't you?

In addition to the next / previous title (file)names, most of them also offer at least desktop playlist download and, with most titles, editing / synchronizing back; with many titles you can also get the details of the songs and, with very few of them, even the lyrics, the aditional ("ID3") information embedded in the file and the album art (when available).

Note that it's in the "Explanation for the comparison chart" section that I explain most of the advanced functionalities and capabilities the MMRC apps offer/have.

1.3 Connectivity

At the beginning of this roundup, I've quickly mentioned a scenario where a Windows Mobile-based media control through Wi-Fi may be highly useful. In this section, I elaborate on in what ways (using what kinds of (wireless) connections) you can remotely control a media player on a desktop computer.

First, there are two main ways you can connect your Windows Mobile device to your desktop computer. One of them is either native or serial Bluetooth support (supported by very few MMRC apps), the other is the widely supported, well-known TCP/IP like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth Personal Area Network (PAN).

Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

1.3.1 Native or serial Bluetooth apps

require almost no manual configuration (and are, therefore, generally better for a Windows Mobile beginner - no manual connection establishments, no manual desktop IP entering) and, generally,

work on crippled Bluetooth stacks like that of Microsoft. (Why crippled, you may ask. Because, as far as our case is concerned, it doesn't support BT PAN.) Also,

Bluetooth units built into PDA's consume far less power than Wi-Fi units, the other choice for "full" TCP/IP-based remote control

As far as the disadvantages are concerned,

their range is limited (at least compared to Wi-Fi-based solutions),

some of the "full" TCP/IP apps support multicasting to automatically find controllable desktops on the local network, making it unnecessary for the end user to enter any local desktop IP. Also, peer-to-peer (for example, BT PAN) IP addresses remain the same all the time and don't need to be re-entered with most MMRC's. In this respect, the "no setup needed" advantage of BT easily vanishes.

in cases, they only work with a given pair of BT stacks and are incompatible with the other stacks (see the example of jaylee.org’s Bluetooth Remote Control for Windows Mobile) and

very few titles do support this type of connection.