But every time I wanted to change songs, I had to go to another room and make a few mouse clicks on my computer. Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for someone to come up with a good, affordable remote control that lets me change tunes no matter where I am in the house.

Apple’s Remote program

It turns out, I already owned that device. It’s an iPod touch. A new program released by Apple (AAPL) in July was all it took to convert my MP3 player into a sophisticated remote control for my digital-music collection. That program, called simply Remote, runs on the iPhone as well as on the iPod touch, a version of the Apple MP3 player that has an iPhone-like touch-sensing screen and Internet-access capabilities using Wi-Fi wireless technology. Remote is available free of charge on the online App Store that Apple has used since July to distribute software for those devices.

In essence, Remote is a remote control for all music stored on a Mac or Windows PC that’s loaded into iTunes, Apple’s music jukebox software. It allows you to jump between playlists, browse artists and pump up the volume. For the program to work, you need to buy into using other Apple entertainment products.

In the simplest setup, Remote lets you control the music from stereo speakers connected directly to a PC. But it’s most useful when you use a PC to deliver audio to additional speakers around a home — say, a pair on the patio and in the living room.

Apple sells a couple of products that receive audio signals from a PC running iTunes. Both work wirelessly over a Wi-Fi home network so you don’t need to put holes into your walls to run computer and speaker wires. I tested Remote using both. One is an Apple TV, a $229 set-top box in my living room that plays digital audio and video through a standard home-theater system. The other is an AirPort Express, a $99 Apple wireless networking device on my patio connected to a pair of powered A5 speakers made by Audioengine, of San Jose, Calif. A third set of speakers was connected to an iMac in the kitchen, where I store all of my digital music. (The least expensive iPod touch costs $299.)

It was a breeze to configure the Apple TV and AirPort Express to show up as remote speakers in iTunes on my computer. Setting up Remote to give me mobile control over this array of speakers was trickier. After installing the program on my iPod touch, I couldn’t get it to work with iTunes on my PC. After 20 minutes of fiddling with the security settings for my Wi-Fi base station, iTunes finally recognized Remote. I was in business.

We all know how confusing the remote controls for TV sets and stereo systems can be. Remote, by contrast, cleanly displays all the music on my PC on the color screen of my iPod touch.

The program let me flip through artists, albums and playlists with simple finger swipes. But I was sorry that Remote doesn’t have a feature in the iPod touch called cover flow that lets users browse their music libraries by flipping through album-cover art. Apple says it may offer the feature in the future.

The software also let me easily turn on and off the music from my speakers in my kitchen, living room and patio. I could have all the speakers on at once — good for a party. The sound was terrific. The crisp-sounding $349 Audioengine speakers don’t require a stereo receiver.

Because Remote uses Wi-Fi to communicate with iTunes, I could control music anywhere around my house and backyard, which are small enough to be fully covered with a signal from my Wi-Fi base station. That’s a big plus over conventional remote controls that use infrared, a technology that doesn’t work through walls.

One drawback: The battery in my iPod touch drained overnight when I configured the device to stay connected to iTunes, a feature that increases software responsiveness. Changing the setting let me go days without recharging my iPod touch, but it meant I had to wait a couple of seconds for Remote to connect to iTunes when I started up the software — an acceptable trade-off.

Another multiroom audio product with a good remote control is the ZonePlayer from Sonos, an equipment maker based in Santa Barbara, Calif. That system has some advantages over Apple’s offerings, including the ability to access tunes from online music services, such as Pandora and Rhapsody, and separate volume controls for each set of speakers.

The Sonos system starts at $999 for a remote control and wireless receivers, without speakers, that can deliver music to two rooms.

For people who already own an iPod touch or iPhone, Remote is a good reason to buy an AirPort Express, and fill your home with music.

Walter S. Mossberg is on vacation.

• Email Nick.Wingfield@wsj.com.

Now, two more set-top boxes have been launched to try to marry the Internet and the TV. Both adapters, from Sony (SNE) and Roku, worked well in my tests, but each has limitations. The problem is that one of the boxes supplies content from a wide range of Internet video sources, but only works on selected models of one brand of TV set; the other works on a wide variety of TVs, but only provides a single source of content.

Sony’s adapter is the Bravia Internet Video Link. This is a $300 module that attaches to certain Sony HDTV models. It can either be set up beside the TV or snapped onto the back of the set. Once it’s connected to your TV and to your home network for Internet access, a new menu appears on the TV allowing you a choice of videos from numerous online sources, including YouTube, Yahoo (YHOO), Blip. TV, Sports Illustrated, AOL, Wired, and the Web sites of CBS (CBS), Showtime and more.

Setting up the Bravia Internet Video Link was straightforward, even though it involved a welter of cables. There is no built-in Wi-Fi — you need either a cable or an add-on wireless adapter to connect to the Internet. The primary hookup to the TV is via a modern type of cable called HDMI, for High Definition Multimedia Interface.

I tested the Sony Link using the company’s most unusual HDTV set — a tiny, very costly model that uses a very thin, very vivid new screen technology called OLED, for Organic Light-Emitting Diode. This TV provided a spectacular picture, but it isn’t required to use the Sony module. The Link works on many larger, more common Sony sets with more common screens. It just doesn’t work on non-Sony TV sets.

Sony’s Bravia Internet Video Link adapter

The Sony module doesn’t have its own remote control. It uses the one that came with the TV. This makes for an awkward experience, because there are no standard play and pause buttons, and various other buttons on the remote meant to do one thing on the TV may do another when watching Internet video via the Link module.

Also, I found some of the Internet content to be disappointing. Many of the items labeled “movies” on various Internet channels were really just trailers, and some content was stale. For instance, some baseball news videos on Yahoo were weeks old.

However, Sony plans to make one of its feature films, “Hancock,” available through the Link module before it’s released on DVD. More important, it will be adding access to Amazon’s (AMZN) forthcoming video-streaming service, which promises to contain a wealth of full-length content.

The Netflix Player by Roku is much simpler. In fact, it was the simplest set-top box I have ever tested. It costs just $100 and does just one thing: It allows Netflix (NFLX) subscribers to view its movies and TV shows via the Internet on a television set instead of on a computer. It can’t get you any other video content from the Internet.

The Netflix player is a small, plain black box that works with most TVs, not just digital or high-definition models. It connects using both old-fashioned cables, like the kind used by many VCRs and older DVD players, or an HDMI cable.

Unlike the Sony, the Roku box includes both wireless and wired Internet connectivity, and has its own remote. While the box is capable of displaying high-definition content, the Netflix service isn’t currently streaming movies and TV shows in high definition, so you get varying quality, depending on your TV and Internet speed, up to DVD-type levels.

There’s no added monthly fee required to use the Roku box, but you must be a Netflix subscriber. The box merely displays the movies or TV shows you have placed in your Instant Queue on Netflix. You have to do this on your computer before viewing the videos on the Roku box. You can choose from around 12,000 streaming movies and TV shows, far fewer than the 100,000 titles Netflix makes available via DVD, but a sizable collection.

In my tests, the Roku box set up quickly and easily, the interface and remote were simple and effective, and the movies and TV shows I tested streamed quickly and without hesitation over my fast home Internet connection.

Both products are meant to promote sales of other things — Sony TVs and the Netflix movie-rental service. They do these tasks well, but neither is the breakthrough solution that will connect most TVs to most Internet video content.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.