Too lazy to get up and walk across the room and turn your TV on? And too cheap to buy one of those fancy Sideshow remotes with the built in LCD so that you can select music without turning the TV on?

Niveus is beta testing Pocket Remote 2.0, a Windows Media Center remote control application for Windows Mobile or PC. Here's how it works:

• Download the zip file to start a 10-day free trial (no final pricing information has been released yet)
• Unzip the file to find two installers, one for the server (the PC you want to control) and one for the remote control application you want to install on your PDA, smartphone, or remote PC.
• Install the server program on your PC and select whether you want to control Windows Media Player or Windows Vista Media Center
• Install the remote control application on your mobile device or remote PC.

That's it. Now when you launch the remote control application you can play music, online radio, or use a virtual remote control to access other media center features. You'll need to have an internet connected PDA or PC running on the same network as your server. Niveus Pocket Remote does a pretty good job of auto-detecting servers on your network, although you can enter information manually as well. Oh yeah, and you can control multiple PCs as well.
[via Chris Lanier]