You know what probably would have been a no-brainer for Microsoft? Building a Windows Media Center remote control app into Windows Phone 7, allowing you to use your phone to control audio and video playback on your PC. But Microsoft doesn’t really seem to be paying much attention to Windows Media Center these days, so I’m not really surprised the company didn’t bother baking it into the new mobile OS. Fortunately third party developers are there to pick up the torch.
Remotive is one of the first remote control apps I’ve seen for Windows Phone 7, and it’s designed to let you control Windows Media Center on a PC running Windows 7 or Vista. Just download and install the Remotive Server on your PC, pay $1.99 to grab the Remotive App for Windows Phone 7 from the Marketplace, and you should be good to go.
Right now it looks like the app simply controls playback of your music library. You can browse the library by album or artist and play or pause media. Future updates should ad search and volume control functions. There’s no word at the moment on whether the developer plans to add video support.
If you don’t feel like spending $1.99, there is a free trial available, but it will only list the first 50 albums or artists in your collection.