The House Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection convened a 2 1/2 hour meeting to discuss HDTV standards and deployment issues on April 24, 1998. I was invited to give testimony. The panel was made up of a large group of executives representing the consumer electronics, the television broadcast and the cable industries. In addition there were two representatives from the computer industry, Bob Stearns from Compaq and me, from Intel. The chair was Billy Tamzin, a republican who later went on to make a fortune as a lobbyist. The ranking member from the democrats was Ed Markey (now running for the Senate in MA). Stearns and I had a couple of objectives. While most of the panel saw a TV, we saw a Monitor. We understood that with that if we could achieve high resolution and progressive scan, the HDTV set of the future could serve as a monitor for computers. Just like the CD and DVD, the consumer industry do the R&D and and manufacturing of important and innovative products which the computer industry would “highjack” for its own use. Everyone one on the panel had their own agenda and often it was a secret agenda. Continue reading →