Build or Buy decision

This is the second in a series. The overview is here.

State of the industry:

So far, I can find a bunch of solutions to stream media to a client. That is, given a server containing a bunch of media, Spit it out to a client machine (PC, cell phone, television, etc.) so you can consume it wherever you are. This doesn't cut it for our purposes. Instead, we want the media to play at the source, but be able to change the behavior of the media player at the host from a client somewhere.

Items of interest:

• http://pocketpccentral.net/software/remote2.htm - semi-functional
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973247.aspx - educational, but not entirely functional for our purposes (makes use of .net remoting which isn't my favorite solution, not sure why)
• http://www.alloysoft.com/ - Might be great if I had an iPhone
• http://www.x10.com/entertainment/remote_controls.html - might have something of interest if I were an X10 household

So far, that's all I have. So, if I want a remote control to work on a laptop, pocket pc, smartphone, (and maybe a website), it looks like I'm out of luck in the commercial market. So, it looks like the build option is the one for me.

Of course, that's what I expected to choose. Otherwise, this would have been a really short series.