Developing web-based remote control for Windows Media Center

July 6, 2011

For the typical Home Theater PC (HTPC) user, playing some music or making sure that you are recording the next episode of The Big Bang Theory necessitates turning on the television. For some of us, that means dropping the projector screen and closing all the blinds. We need a piece of software which runs on a smartphone or a tablet to act as a two-way remote control for Windows Media Center (WMC).

Our product is web based so it will run on Android and iOS devices. On tablets it closely mimics the WMC user interface so that the user will be comfortable navigating around the various screens. It communicates with a server-side component via UPnP to pull up media libraries and to control the media player. The TV guide portion is read directly from the SQLite database used by WMC, and recordings are scheduled through the Click-To-Record API.