Actually, there is another option that I happened to come across this morning, but I'm not sure about application; maybe someone can help me out. Here's what I'm thinking...
First observe the following links:
http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/DevZone/CommandLine.htmland
http://www.musicex.com/mediajukebox/DevZone/CommandLine.htmlYou'll see that the developers of Media Center were wise enough to include some pretty advanced tasks to be performed via the command line (these are coincidentally the same tasks that one would take advantage of were they to design a command input plugin). The only problem of course is that in order to use them right now you'd have to manually type out the command line, which is simply absurd. So, I had an idea; is there a Windows application out there that can be used to configure some global hotkeys? I mean something COMPLETELY customizable; not just pre-programmed controls for a select number of programs. I'm talking about something that would let you assign ANYTHING to a hotkey; in this case a whole bevy of command line parameters that could be used with Media Center.
Of course, the other option is to design a hotkey plugin, which seems pretty easy to me. I'm really quite shocked that no one has yet designed a customizable hotkey plugin for MC that could be used to control MC while in another program. I'm not trivializing the effort that goes into even the most simple plugins at all, but I'm really sort of suprised that with all the incredibly advanced and complicated plugins out there no one has made a hotkey one for MC yet. Winamp had like 5 or 6 before the developers actually included global hotkey support in the most recent version.
That being said, if there is anyone around who might know a bit about programming and wants to team up with me and crank out a plugin for MC, I'd love to see if there is anything we could churn out.