The one constant with Media PCs is change.

Each year, the platform we call the Media PC continues to grow its capabilities, letting people watch, record, edit and enjoy richer video and audio media in ways not previously possible. Blu-Ray*, HD-DVD* and HDMI* are but a few of the recent arrivals to the Media PC, and when the next hot new format or content type comes to market, you can bet that it will show up on Media PCs.

All this change is exciting, because it breathes new life into the platform. But for all the constant change, there’s something that’s just a constant, and that’s complexity. Media PCs have been too hard to set up and use. But before you even get to that point, how do you choose the right Media PC? How do you make informed comparisons of these media-centric marvels?

That’s been our mission for the last two-and-a-half years with the Intel® Digital Home Capabilities Assessment Tool: to make comparing Media PC capabilities simple, and help people choose the Media PC platform that’s right for them.

We’ve made some important changes in version 3.0, changes that will make results easier to understand and easier to compare. We’ve also made running these tests much easier. And as if all that wasn’t enough, we’re adding a very cool Online Results Browser to let you upload your own test results, and see how your system stacks up against other Media PCs. To learn more about these cool new features, click Next.

In the Beginning

When the Intel® Capabilities Forum first came online two years ago, we stated that our mission was to move the industry Beyond the Speedometer. Back in the fall of 2005, I stated that this web site was created to give voice to a platform evaluation approach that was based on quality of experience rather than raw speed. With the impending arrival of Intel® DHCAT 3.0, we believe that much of that original vision will be realized.

The Intel® Digital Home Capabilities Assessment Tool (Intel® DHCAT) was born of the realization that the PC industry’s usual approach to benchmarking – faster is better – wouldn’t really work for the media-centric things people wanted to do with Media PCs. With video and audio media, quality of experience is a more telling metric than raw speed could ever hope to be. And so began our endeavor to put these ideas to work.

When we were getting started, the first thing we did was look beyond the PC industry to other industries that grapple with quality-of-experience measurement issues, like the telecommunications and broadcast industries. It was then we became aware of a technique called perceptual modeling, a field that blends audio/video technology, computer science, and cognitive psychology to understand, measure, and predict how real people rate quality of experience. The “secret sauce” of this field is that once researchers understand how people will rate video or audio playback experience, a model can be constructed to accurately predict how a group of people would rate that quality of experience…without them actually having to see/listen to the content. That’s a powerful evaluation tool: a jury test without the jury. Click here for more about the details about perceptual modeling.

Intel® DHCAT Hits the Streets

We released Intel® DHCAT 1.0 in the fall of 2005. It featured the ability to predict user ratings, called Mean Opinion Scores (MOS Scores) for video playback, video recording and video streaming. It featured cutting-edge video analysis software from a British firm called Psytechnics*, a recognized leader in the field of perceptual modeling. But, like most version 1.0 pieces of software, ours had its fair share of rough edges. Some came from trying to create a whole new class of platform evaluation instrument. Some came from the complexity of Media PCs and getting them correctly configured. And some just came from the fact that we had a lot to learn about making Media PC evaluation truly simple. It was a humbling experience.

Next came Intel® DHCAT 2.0, which greatly improved on its predecessor in several key areas. It was easier to run. It took a lot less time to finish. Its GUI was easier to navigate. We made many steps forward, and some members of the press even picked up on it, and used it in their stories to cover Home Theater PCs (HTPCs). But it was still hard to run, and the results screen was still a bit overwhelming for the uninitiated.

We knew we were onto a good idea and that we were making progress, but there were still pieces missing. This tool, for all its impressive technologies and innovations wasn’t much good to consumers unless it solved their problems in some meaningful way. We were determined to make Intel® DHCAT better, and this time, “better” meant useful and helpful to consumers. The only way we were going to achieve that goal was to go talk to consumers, and really learn what their problems were when choosing Media PCs, and what information they needed to choose the right system. So that’s what we did…

Making It Simpler

We thought we had a pretty good idea what the market needed. And while some of our intuitions were proven correct, we still learned a lot that ultimately will make Intel® DHCAT 3.0 a much better platform evaluation instrument.

In the late spring of 2007, we gathered several groups of consumers in Portland, Oregon. We asked them to talk about buying and using Media PCs. We wanted to learn more about they researched about Media PCs, what features they valued most, and showed them some mockups of different results screens to see which ones were easiest to understand. This was a professionally-designed consumer market research study done in conjunction with our Intel’s Media and Acoustics Perception Lab (MAPL), based in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Many findings came out of these meetings. But to boil it down, we learned that these consumers want:

• A simple & quick summary of the quality of a media PC’s capabilities
• Terminology that’s easy to understand
• To search and prioritize usages when comparing media PCs.
• A visual comparison between the multiple media PCs to make picking the right media PC easier

We were especially interested in what these people wanted to see about a Media PC’s capabilities to help them choose the right system. Here, we learned that people:

• like to see multiple systems compared to each other on one page in a matrix
• want a visual representation, a quick snapshot of information
• like a rating system (i.e. stars) something in which they are familiar

These folks didn’t want all the information “dumbed down.” Yes, they did want a quick summary of results they could scan to get a snapshot of a system’s capabilities, so we greatly simplified Intel® DHCAT 3.0’s main results screen. But they also wanted to be able to drill deeper into those results, and find out more about specific capabilities. So we added that feature, both in Intel® DHCAT 3.0 itself, and in the online results browser.

The key design driver for version 3.0 was to make things as simple as they should be, but still provide access to underlying details about a Media PC’s capabilities. So we incorporated learnings like these into Intel® DHCAT 3.0, and we think the tool now strikes the right balance between a quick, simple summary of a Media PC’s capabilities, and the more “atomic” levels of detail about specific system capabilities that users also want to evaluate.

Intel® DHCAT 3.0: What’s New

Intel® DHCAT 3.0 is much easier to use, and its results are much easier to understand. We’re also adding some key new features like an online results browser (ORB) with some advanced functionality that lets you evaluate your system without even installing Intel® DHCAT. We also are adding HD video quality tests you can run to examine a Media PC’s video playback with your own eyes.

Simplified Results: One issue we’ve wrestled with from the beginning has been finding the right level of detail in presenting Intel® DHCAT results. There’s a LOT of data, and we want to convey a complete picture. However, in previous versions, we’ve opted to provide more detail as opposed to less at the top level. This produced results screens like this one:

This is the Platform Capabilities Matrix (PCM) from DHCAT 2.02, the current version. As you can see, lots of information, but without a legend, it’s hard to know what these icons represent, or to some degree, even what you’re looking at. With a legend to explain the icons, some people in our market research study liked this screen, but most thought it was overwhelming.

What we realized was that while this level of detail is useful, it shouldn’t be the top level of detail. With that in mind, we showed other, more distilled results screens to the consumers we talked to in our study. The most popular one was very similar to the top-level results screen that you’ll see in DHCAT 3.0:

What’s great about this approach is that after scanning this screen for 5-10 seconds, you’ve got a good snapshot of this PC’s media capabilities. If you want to drill down, you can click on any one of these elements and get more information about that particular capability.

What’s New: ORB & Rate My System

Online Results Browser: This is probably the single coolest feature we’ve put into Intel® DHCAT 3.0. We have wanted to add an online component to Intel® DHCAT since the beginning, but development schedules and the implementation complexity – some due to the complexity of our earlier results screens – kept that from happening. But Intel® DHCAT 3.0 will have an Online Results Browser (ORB), where you can upload your own Intel® DHCAT results, view others, and compare your system to other Media PCs out there. Here’s a screenshot to give you an idea what the ORB will look like:

In the ORB, you’ll be able to see how your system scored, and how it compares to other Media PCs. To the most capable system go all bragging rights. In addition, you’ll be able to search the ORB, looking for systems that are more capable in the areas you care about most. You’ll also be able to search based on components (amount of memory, CPU type, etc.).

You can compare multiple systems in the ORB, and quickly see which system is best at which capability, as shown here:

Rate My System: This may well be the single coolest piece of technology we’re introducing in Intel® DHCAT 3.0: the ability to see estimated test results for your system…without even running a single test on your system!

We are developing a Rate My System where you can visit the Intel® Capabilities Forum web site, and after about 10-15 seconds to examine your system’s installed components, the ORB compares your system to others in the ORB database. It will then show you results from the system most like yours. This is estimation, and mileage will vary. But it will give you a good initial idea how capable your system is as a Media PC.

What’s New: HD Video Quality Tests

Intel® DHCAT 3.0’s use of perceptual models make it unique among PC platform evaluation tools, since it focuses on quality of experience, and creates a kind of “jury test in a box.” But it’s still useful to put one’s own eyes to some video test material and judge for oneself the quality of video playback. So in Intel® DHCAT 3.0, we’re adding subjective HD video tests where you’ll get instructions on what issues to look for with video quality, be shown a video clip, and then you can rate that clip based on what you just saw. These tests aren’t part of the Intel® DHCAT 3.0 overall score, but are tests you can run if you want to on your system to see its HD video playback capabilities firsthand.

Here are a few screenshots from these upcoming tests:

Windmill: This video clip looks at interlacing artifacts, such as “combing,” which is visible in the windmill blades.

Moving Alphabet: This video test looks at scaling artifacts, which become visible as the letters scroll by horizontally.

Pre-Order Yours Today

We believe Intel® DHCAT 3.0 represents some major steps forward on the road to greatly improved Media PC evaluation. It tests the system based on quality of experience, tells consumers what they want to know, and provides some powerful new online tools to see how your current system stacks up against others for Media PC capabilities. We think there’s something for everyone in Intel® DHCAT 3.0, but we want to hear what you think, so head over to our forums and sound off. For as much as progress as we’ve made, Intel® DHCAT can always be made better with feedback from the benchmarking community.

Intel® DHCAT 3.0 will be out a little later this fall, but you can pre-order your free copy today. Just click on the link below, fill in the order form, and as soon as the tool is ready, you’ll be on the first on your block to have a copy.