For the past month I have been exploring options and building a perfect Home Theater PC for my 50” Vizio plasma. Besides the obvious, it has to play movies, youtube videos, etc, I had a few concrete goals in mind. Here they are:

• it absolutely had to handle 1080P h264, specifically movies encoded using x264. An average movie size for this format is between 8.5 and 13 GB. There were 2 problems to overcome: the CPU had to be able to handle the decoding (my desktop dual core Conroe barely kept up) and the network had to be fast enough to stream in real time from my storage PC a floor away.
• I needed to have the easiest control over the whole thing. VNC wasn’t good enough, because I don’t always have a laptop lying around.
• It had to support 7.1 sound.
• It had to have excellent picture quality on the TV, preferably during both movies and regular browsing/reading, etc. HDMI/DVI was optional, depending on how good the analog quality was.
• It had to be as cheap as possible but still good enough to do the job really well.
• It had to have a serial port (most micro ATX motherboards nowadays do not, which is upsetting).
• It had to look slick and unconventional – unlike a regular PC.

Setup

After lots of research, I used the following components from the following sources (best deals I could find):

Processor

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 Processor, 2.2 GHz, $79.99, no tax, and free shipping. I decided to go for a relatively cheap but still very powerful CPU and the results exceeded my expectations. More below.

Motherboard

ASUS P5KPL-CM LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard, $67, no tax, and free shipping. Also available on Newegg for $54.99 + tax + $8.97 shipping. It has on-board 7.1 sound, 2 PCI slots, and a serial port (for my good old Packard Bell serial remote control). No HDMI/DVI and no onboard RAID but I didn’t need those.

Memory (RAM)

OCZ SLI-Ready 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Memory (OCZ2N800SR2GK). $38.99 + tax, free shippping – $25 rebate. Also available on Amazon.

Case and Power Supply

Antec New Solution Series NSK2480 Case, $107.99, no tax + $17.82 shipping – $8 coupon (code: TAKER). Even cheaper on Amazon. The case already comes with a 380W power supply, so I didn’t need to buy a separate one. It provides plenty of power for the HTPC. Also, there’s a lot of space inside for ventilation, and I didn’t get a crammed feeling when installing my components. Ventilation is a separate point I’d like to highlight with this case, as it came with 2 120mm fans and 2 extra ones just in case. The lowest of 3 speed settings has worked great for me.

Wireless HTPC Keyboard + Mouse

DSI 2.4GHz Wireless Keyboard with Optical trackball, Black, FK-760, $52.99, no tax, and free shipping. Inspired by the famous mysql geek Jeremy Zawodny here and here.

Wireless PCI Card (802.11N)

Airlink AWLH6080 300N Wireless-N & G PCI Adapter for Desktops, $44.99 + tax, no shipping as I picked it up at a local Fry’s. I needed to start experimenting with 802.11N because I didn’t want a swarm of network cables laying around. More on this later but I can tell you it’s great. Also available on Amazon. Windows 7 picked it up with no extra drivers to install. Perfect. If you can't find any Airlinks around, Amazon has plenty of other Wireless N cards to pick from (I would try to match the router brand, btw).

Wireless Router (802.11N)

Airlink AR680W 300N Wireless-N & G Router, I think about $50 + tax at Fry’s. Also available on Amazon. Or, again, if you can't find Airlink available, there are plenty of other Wireless N routers.

Speakers, Surround Sound

Logitech Z-5500 505W 5.1 Speakers, on sale at Dell for $170 a few months ago. Also available on Amazon.

DVD Player/Burner

LG Black DVD Burner, $25 or so. I picked a cheap and good one, and it’s worked flawlessly. I decided to skip trying to match the silver shade with the case and just go for the black one. I am not interested in Bluray players but if you are, you are welcome to substitute this DVD player for one.

Graphics Card [OPTIONAL]

MSI GeForce 9400GT 512MB PCI-Express Graphics Card for $60.43 with free shipping and no tax on Amazon. Optional because the motherboard already contains a VGA out which proved to be personally enough for me. However, this card is awesome if you need more performance for gaming or more than just VGA – for example HDMI or DVI. Check this out. This 9400GT has HDMI, VGA, and DVI outputs!
Update: Kyron in the comments mentions a trick to allow passing sound over HDMI using this card.

Sound Card [OPTIONAL]

Diamond Multimedia XtremeSound 7.1 Sound Card with Dolby Digital Live (XS71DDL) for $50, free shipping and no tax on Amazon. If you need a digital optical out or decided to go with another motherboard that doesn’t support 7.1 sound but want to have 7.1, I found that this sound card works really well.

Hard Drive

Some old 60GB hard drive. I’m planning on streaming most things, so it’s not worth spending any money on this item. You can pick a 1TB Western Digital Black drive on Amazon for about $100.

Operating System

Update 5/12/09: Windows XP 7. The new Windows 7 is still in RC at the time of this writing but it is so good and so ready that many are already using it in their day-to-day systems. I put Windows 7 onto this HTPC a few days ago and I must say – I am very-very impressed. There's not a single hiccup, bug, blue screen, or hangup. The OS is beautiful, sleek, fast, robust, and operational. It even comes with its own Media Center but it didn't seem to detect any of my media on remote servers. I highly recommend Windows 7.

If you're not afraid to try Linux (you shouldn't be – it's great and free), I recommend Ubuntu or OpenSUSE.

Verdict

The final product exceeded my expectations. Not only did it play 1080P h264 perfectly, it didn’t even need a separate graphics card to take over the load. The CPU usage is about 35-40% when playing 720P and 40-50% when playing 1080P. No need for DVI or HDMI input – the standard VGA connector is very crisp and provides much better fine print and detail than HDMI. I can read and browse small font without any problems. The sound is superb as well, after all the tweaking, so no additional sound or video cards were needed. Using the wireless ultra light keyboard as well as the remote, I am now able to control everything on the screen with ease.

Temperatures, Ventilation, Cooling

The case provides excellent ventilation, as I already mentioned. The CPU idles at about 30C and goes to 45-48C when playing the highest quality 1080P HD video I could find. In short, the case is cool and quiet.

Wireless (802.11N)

After playing around with the 802.11N (or at least Airlink101’s implementation), I have to say I’m quite impressed. I get speeds of between 3 and 5 MB/s (Megabytes per second) and all 720P and most 1080P content streams live. Some really hi-res 1080P movies require to be downloaded first, which confuses me. During streaming, instead of using 4-5 MB/s, VLC (or MPC, or any other player I’ve tried) uses only about 1-2 MB/s and starts lagging. I don’t yet have a workaround for the player to utilize 100% of my bandwidth and stop lagging. Do you?

One thing I really hated about Airlink101 is their software (the firmware seems great so far). It’s the most basic piece of crap software accompanying hardware I’ve ever seen. Absolutely no thought and effort went into it – I believe it’s still on version 1.0 or 1.1. It’s so bad, even the Windows default wireless manager is better. The final straw was the absence of a setting to connect to preferred networks only. After I found my computer randomly connected to some open netgear network one day, I decided to not use Airlink101’s software for a long-long time, maybe ever.

The Sound

ASUS’ onboard 7.1 HD audio delivers very decent sound. I’ve installed the latest drivers, enable virtual fill (so that 2 channel sound gets automatically distributed to all speakers), and hooked up the Logitech Z5500 5.1 and another Logitech 2.1 to form a pseudo 8.2 speaker system. This thing has thump!

A note on VNC: I ended up not using it as it was creating sync issues while playing video (vsync?). If I turn on VNC while playing a video (and even if I turn it off), the vsync issues are quite apparent. The wireless keyboard is a better solution anyway, so I am quite happy with it (though it could use larger operational range).

HTPC/Media Center Software

Network file sharing + file manager (Total Commander or any other) + Media Player Classic + ffdshow codec set have worked very well but I still wanted to find the perfect media center program for visually pleasing media experience. It turns out there are a few candidates. Here they are:

• XBMC – free, not bad at all, but it was too buggy and couldn’t find my network drives.
• Mediaportal – also free and also buggy. It couldn’t play a lot of video files.
• SageTV – not free. Worse than the 2 above. Absolutely no reason to pay for something this bad when free alternatives are available.
• MeediOS – free. Too buggy to even run.
• Boxee – free, there is an alpha Windows version but it’s quite buggy. Boxee is probably the best one of them all, at least looking at all the recommendation on the web but the software isn’t very stable yet. It’s very socially oriented, which I like a lot. They’re active on twitter.
• GB-PVR – a Windows PVR and Media Center. Haven’t tried it as I’m now convinced I’m better off without a MC.
• Anything else major I’m missing?

So, as of this time, Total Commander, Media Player Classic, and the ffdshow are still my preferred method of watching videos. I don’t feel that any of the programs I’ve tried are ready for prime time yet.

Remaining Work

• I’d like to figure out how to wake up the machine on keyboard event. I don’t think it’s possible with the wireless keyboard like that, but I’m not 100% on that.

• I’d like to know how to stream videos utilizing full network capacity rather than buffering what's needed and hiccupping when a slowdown occurs.

Pictures Of The Final System

And I couldn’t resist:

• How To Play FLVs In Media Player Classic (Including Fast Forwarding), Or Forget You, VLC
• How To Download And Install Windows Media Player 11 Bypassing WGA
• Wireless Headphones Are Nothing New – What About Wireless Earbuds?
• Is Your Simplifymedia For Winamp Broken On A 64 Bit Windows 7? Here's How To Fix It
• The Most Awesome VPN Tip: How To Make Windows Automatically Use Your Local WiFi/LAN Connection Directly For Requests That Don't Need To Go Through VPN

• Between 1 and 100 UPDATE queries are constantly running on the master in parallel. If the slave IO is only fast enough to handle 50 of them without lagging, as soon as 51 start running, the slaves starts to lag.
• A more common problem is when one query takes an hour to run (let's say, it's an UPDATE with a big WHERE clause that doesn't use an index). In this case, the query runs on the master for an hour, which isn't a big problem because it doesn't block other queries. However, when the query moves over to the slaves, all of them start to lag because it plugs up the single replication thread.

There is nothing you can do right now to fix the way MySQL handles replication. If the replication threads could run in parallel, I'm guessing horrible things would happen to the data integrity due to race conditions, canceled queries, slave restarts, differences in query execution times due to server load and configuration, etc. Replication is already an asynchronous, prone to getting out of sync business (hint: use maatkit tools by Baron Schwartz and specifically mk-table-checksum and mk-table-sync to sync up your slaves).

In order to see if a slave is lagging, execute the 'show slave status' command and look for the Seconds_Behind_Master value. The way this value is calculated can be slightly ambiguous and unclear, so I'll explain. It is simply a difference between the 2 timestamps – the time of the last received (and queued up in the relay log) query that already executed on the master and the time of the currently executing query on the slave. Thus this value is not real time (it is possible to catch up to the master much faster); it's an approximation, or special metrics if you will, that helps point out problems.

So what can you do if you start hitting replication lag? This is the ultimate question, and the answer depends on your application. Here are the things I came up with after dealing with MySQL for a few years (there are undoubtedly other techniques, but these all come from my own experience):

1. Normalize your data, if it is not already. Non-normalized tables lead to repetition and is generally considered bad practice. More data – more IO in most cases. There can be cases, however, where you can normalize too much. Having JOINs is much slower than not having them, and it can hurt your queries if you JOIN a lot. Finally, the extreme case is mentioned at highscalability.com: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Using a Lot of Disk Space to Scale. "You–pause for dramatic effect–duplicate data instead of normalize it. *shudder*". Flickr is provided as an example.
2. Shard (meaning, slice) your data, horizontally and vertically. For example, you can horizontally partition by some sort of key, hash, username, or other properties. You can also partition vertically by moving out some table columns into other databases. As an example, if you had a database of videos, storing view counts, number of favorites, etc. is OK but if these fields receive a lot of frequent updates, you are bound to have slave lag. Instead, separate these into a dedicated stats table(s). You don't have to shard all of your data – even sharding the most active bits helps immensely (for example, you can choose to shard your stats tables and leave the main one alone).
3. Upgrade machines running MySQL (first slaves, then master, for the reasons given above). 99% of the time, disk IO is the bottleneck, CPU being the other 1%. Move to RAIDed setups (RAID10 or RAID0) with 6-10 15K RPM SCSI or SSD drives. Add a lot of RAM. Make sure you're running a 64 bit OS if you have more than 3GB of RAM, so that the mysql process may utilize more of it. My search for the best MySQL server under $10K may be of some help here.
4. Separate your applications onto different MySQL instances. If you are running separate applications A, B, and C that don't depend on each other, consider giving them their own machines, otherwise a single long-running UPDATE or INSERT query in application A will delay all writes by application B and C. This is actually quite common – even though the server may not appear to be loaded, the annoying slave delay will still show its cowardly tail. I want to highlight this again: the replication thread is shared between all databases on the server.
5. Another solution to (4) is multiple MySQL instances, granted that the MySQL machine isn't generally overloaded already. In that case, installing more than 1 mysql daemons would separate replication threads and allow running multiple applications, like A, B, and C on one machine, without affecting each other. MySQL sandbox achieves just that – it is my preferred solution.
6. Split up longer running queries into shorter ones. This should be pretty straightforward – a single query on 10 million rows may run a few hours. Splitting it into batches of 50,000, for example, will give other queries a chance to run in between. Of course, you should take care of data integrity and generally double check what you are doing.
7. Don't overload the same slave by sending all queries to it, as it will just make the matter worse. You can round-robin the queries using either round-robin DNS (eww), round-robin within the application logic (better), smarter application logic, like checking slave load and status from time to time, or my personal favorite – using MySQL proxy and having it pick the least lagging slave for you. An official solution utilizing mysql proxy, called MySQL load balancer, is apparently in the works (I was promised beta access but haven't got it so far).

As a bonus, I wanted to throw in this idea of helping minimize a certain corner case cause of slave delay and feed it to the hungry MySQL minds. I'm not sure if it is mentioned anywhere else, as I have not Googled it. If it's a widely known fact, then I will consider this post as just adding my vote to the usefulness of the technique.

Well, there you have it. Comments are open, so feel free to share your own replication strategies and thoughts about mine.

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I know that a multi-disk RAID array with a bunch of fast disks (15k RPM?) is probably the most important method of improving performance, followed by the amount of RAM, so I'm trying to find the best combination/balance of the two. However, server prices on the Internet range so much that I don't even know where to begin to tell a good deal from a bad one. I don't think SSDs can play a role here, because we need at least 200GB of usable space per machine. For comparison, we currently use the following spec: Dual quadcore Intel, 16GB RAM, 200GB RAID1 + 1TB RAID1 using SATA drives (eww?) in a 2U rack (a bit too chunky, isn't it?) made by Zantaz. It performs quite nicely but I think it chokes on the amount of writes way too early.

So, what does everyone think the best configuration is under $10,000? Bonus points if you can provide a link to the vendor site or at least a model number!

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• MySQL Conference Liveblogging: Optimizing MySQL For High Volume Data Logging Applications (Thursday 2:50PM)
• MySQL Slave Lag (Delay) Explained And 7 Ways To Battle It

When I was working in Radioshack 8 years ago, I remember selling the newest craze: gigantic wireless headphones that were awkward and bulky. The only thing you could do with them is pose as the Verizon guy, running around screaming "can you hear me now?" If you stood at the wrong angle to the receiver, the signal cut out, or even worse, terrible interference turned the most patient people into fiery monsters. I suppose the quality and size of wireless headphones improved over time but they're still unusable in real life because they're completely immobile.

Recently Logitech released a bunch of semi-compromises, like these FreePulse loop-around headphones for $79.99 with a questionable rating and OK reviews, mostly due to crappy sound and fit.

So what's next? Today, while watching Definitely Maybe (I swear, not my idea (!) but I admit it was quite a good movie), I saw Ryan Reynolds wear wireless in-ear buds, listening to his MP3s. After doing a bit of research, I found that wireless buds actually exist (and you can even hook them up to your cell phones and not just audio players)! Some of them are not cheap at all, so if you have a weak heart, move away from the screen and close the browser now.

#1 Sennheiser MX W1

Enter Sennheiser MX W1 at a whopping $499. I'm not confident these are the same ones Ryan was wearing, but they look quite nice and promising – they use the same technology as the ones in this Wired review from CES 2007.

Edit 11/27/2008: You can preorder order the MX W1s on Amazon for $549 $499, no tax, and free shipping.

There are 6 reviews as of today, with an average of 4 stars, which is quite good. As of 11/27/2008, the earphones dropped $50 since I wrote the article. Check out the sweet pics, courtesy of Amazon and Amazon reviewers:

#2 Plantronics Versa

In even more of a concept stage: Plantronics Versa. The looks are OK but the availability is far from reality, it seems.

#3 Etymotic Research Ety8

Added 12/20/08: If you don’t mind wearing a freaking remote on your ear like the dude below, these Etymotic Research Ety8 (ER – quite a respectable company) may be for you. They certainly have a surprisingly optimistic 4 star rating from currently 15 reviews and a decent <$200 price tag. Let’s see some pictures:

#4 DigiFi Opera

Added 12/23/08: DigiFi Opera wireless earbuds (with Kleer technology that’s supposed to be 10x more energy efficient than bluetooth). These are similar to the Etymotic Research ones because they both contain a wire joining the 2 buds together, but the Kleer ones are different in a couple of ways:

• your ears don’t look like they are about to eat a small TV remote
• you don’t resemble a drag queen wearing remote-earrings
• you are not immediately confused with someone leaving a frat party the next morning after passing out on the floor and having crap drawn on your face and remotes attached to your ears… errr wait, how did I come up with that?
• they’re not sold on Amazon, so I don’t have a rating and reviews to go by
• and finally they have an awesome review all in Korean, crazy Asian style, with cartoons (love it!): http://digifi.kr/include/pop_img.asp?imgname=aaa.jpg.

However, with a price tag of $98, they’re about twice as attractive as the ERs (though, again, I’m not sure how good the sound and reception actually are). Here are a few images:

#5 Panasonic RP-BT10

Added 12/23/08: Panasonic RP-BT10 Bluetooth Headphones. $25 from Amazon! Bluetooth! 4 stars from 3 reviews! Hey, that’s not bad at all! Exclamation mark!

Not so fast though. In reality, it’s just a pair of wired earbuds, a receiver, and an iPod only transmitter. Boohoo :-/

#6 Sleek-Audio SA6 W1 Wireless Bundle

Added 12/23/08: Sleek-Audio SA6 W1 Wireless Bundle. Take a great pair of earbuds Sleek Audio SA6 and pair them up with the custom Sleek Audio W1 wireless adaptor and you have yourself a really nice set of wireless earbuds. Excellent review by TrustedReviews.com. Check it out:

#7 JayBird Bluetooth Stereo Headsets

Added 3/31/09: JayBird Bluetooth Stereo Headsets. JayBird is the newest addition to the list, as it just popped on my radar. They make a really solid set of earphones either separately for bluetooth enabled devices (currently $120) or as a bundle with the iPod bluetooth adaptor (currently $147). Slick and sexy looking, I think, though too bulky to be called earbuds anymore. Have a look at the photos:

If you don't own an iPod or a bluetooth enabled device, JayBird also allows you to get the standalone JayBird universal bluetooth adaptor.

#8 Motorola S9-HD

Added 3/31/09: Motorola S9-HD Headset with D650 iPod Adapter. About $100, good reviews, though not earbuds again – those still seem hard to come by.

#9 Kleer Digital Opera S2 and S5

Added 6/10/09: Kleer Digital Opera S2 and S5. These bad boys are set to arrive on June 20th and there's no word on pricing yet. S2 is an upgrade to the previous Digital Opera and S5 adds an iPod-compatible transmitter and some buttons.

So there you have it – our future is wireless, small, and shiny. I'm still unsure what Ryan had in his ears though – if anyone finds out, be sure to share. If there's an even cooler pair of wireless buds that I missed, definitely leave a comment.

Bonus Round

Added 12/23/08: here are a few other interesting wireless audio related items to help get rid of those annoying wires.

•  CyFi Wireless Sports Speaker – Bluetooth Red – wireless bluetooth sports speaker for biking, boating, camping, etc.

• Sony Bluetooth Wireless Transmitter for iPod (Black) – This convenient transmitter lets you enjoy your iPod music wirelessly on a compatible Bluetooth sound system. It doesn't use a battery, and draws minimal power from the iPod. Also available from JayBird.

• Arriva cordless iPod Shuffle headphones with in-ear earbud – excellent idea for ipod shuffle users. No need for wires, no need for bluetooth, just sit your Shuffle behind your head.

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