Controlling Windows Media Player via PHP / Batch Files

I am currently writing a tiny webapp for my HTPC (actually, a PC that serves as both a media player and a web file server) that will allow me to remotely control audio playback without having to turn on my TV just to switch songs.

I am using Windows Media Player as my audio player and I thought I could control it through the PHP COM class . Unfortunately, I couldn't find any documentation or examples on how to manage WMP through this interface.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? The second (and much less preferred) solution is to use PHP exec () to run batch files, which in turn manage WMP.