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[Lomax]

Been playing around with Media Center a while now and has one feature that I think could be a real killer and that's the "Remote Server" functionality. Being able to remote control MC from any device that can display a webpage is just a brilliant idea! For instance, my mobile can already access the MC computer via its Bluetooth connection and I use it to remote control MC through the web interface. Works great - only some crucial functionality is missing:

1) A search function
2) Zone selection
3) Controls + Volume should be always on screen

It should be fairly easy to modify the HTML/CSS source for the web interface to acheive some/all these feature but documentation seems to be non-existent! I have looked everywhere on these forums and the MC site without finding anything which surprises me slightly as JRiver seem very generous with documentation and SDKs for other features of MC. Does anyone here know anything about how to modify the look/capabilities of "Remote Server"? Any help would be much appreciated.

P.S. I am aware of the other remote control options available such as NetRemote but it doesn't run on my phone or my PDA (Palm) or indeed on the Mac in the kitchen. I fail to see the point of this software as its functionality could easily be acheived with a simple web interface.

[Lomax]

Aha! Now I get it! The file remoteserver.dll which is the source of the web interface is actually made by Promixis who also make NetRemote! I'm now 100% sure we will never see a web interface for MC unless someone writes an entirely new plugin. After all, why would Promixis provide free functionality that directly competes with their $19.99 product... I also suppose this means the web interface should potentially be able to support all the functionality of NetRemote!

Since my last post I've also checked out Glissando, a Flash based interface for accessing Remote Server and although it looked pretty nice it used 100% CPU... It also seems to have been abandoned by its developer - and a Flash interface is not what I'm after anyway.

Some progress though: By using FileMon I've found that MC tries to access a styles.css file in the MC\Data\ foder. This file didn't exist on my system but by creating one at least I get basic CSS control over the font/colours used in the web interface. Far from what I'm really after but something to play around with at least.

[JimH]

Aha! Now I get it! The file remoteserver.dll which is the source of the web interface is actually made by Promixis who also make NetRemote!

No.  It was made by JRiver and heavily modified by NetRemote (now Promixis).

[Lomax]

Ok, but the info for the DLL states the copyright holder as Promixis... Does this mean there may be an updated version of this DLL from JRiver that improves its functionality?

[Lomax]

FWIW, here are some screengrabs of what I've been able to acheive with some html/css and plenty of hex editing. Pretty close to what I wanted but of course still no search functionality.

http://213.210.1.2/temp/mcrem1.gif
http://213.210.1.2/temp/mcrem2.gif
http://213.210.1.2/temp/mcrem3.gif
http://213.210.1.2/temp/mcrem4.gif

Note that the screengrabs were done in IE at 240x320 resolution but things should look v. similar in any other browser including on Palm PDAs and smartphones. Resolutions below 240px width would probably not work very well though...

The controls at the top are in a separate frame and I've tried to squeeze everything to be as narrow as possible. I must say I'm pretty pleased with the results, I can now use a Palm PDA for remote controlling MC from anywhere in the house!

Contact me if you're interested in this hack and I'll help you get started.

[Bill Kearney]

It'd be interesting to see your CSS changes.  Given that CSS allows some rather nifty tricks with adding images to styles there might be some clever things possible.  But without the web interface making use of just a few class attributes it's tough to do anything fancy.