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Equal-opportunity media

The PC software works with a variety of media players and storage devices, and does wireless transfers to Nokia N80.

Erica Ogg Former Staff writer, CNET News
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur.
Erica Ogg

A digital music application that forces Apple, Sony and Microsoft to play nice? It's a Christmas miracle. Or something.

Recently released SimpleCenter 4.1 from Universal Electronics is a PC-only software application that organizes and plays any music, movie and photo format. It's an equal-opportunity program, able to sync media files with a diverse group of devices--an iPod, PSP, Xbox 360, Nokia N80, N93, USB sticks and other PlaysForSure players.

Simple Center 4.1
Universal Electronics

On the plus side, posessors of the Nokia N80 can wirelessly update their media content from their home PC using SimpleCenter, which is cool. However, though SimpleCenter allows iTunes users to browse and play content downloaded from the online store, it can't sync it with the iPod due to the content-protection scheme that Apple uses. However, SimpleCenter can play any movie or song from iTunes on a PC, and any video content can be converted to any necessary file format and uploaded to one of the aforementioned gadgets.

The program is also DLNA 1.5-compliant, which ensures the interoperability of consumer tech devices. That means any other device that is DLNA 1.5-compliant will work with SimpleCenter.