Moving pictures -- known as digital video in this context -- are the most exciting and demanding of these graphic formats. As computers become multimedia workstations, as television moves to high-definition digital formats, and as telephony takes on elements of both, information technologies are merging together in unprecedented ways. The industries that are creating information networks fully expect digital video to be an essential element of this convergence. And they anticipate huge annual markets for digital video -- in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars -- for phone, pay-per-view movies, home shopping, financial, educational, and other services that will include a video component.

The commercial stakes could hardly be larger. The overwhelming economic benefits from genuinely interoperable digital video technology stem from expanded and more attractive capabilities and services on the user end of the information framework. The broad user categories of entertainment, manufacturing, education and training, and health services alone account for several trillion dollars of commerce. Another set of industries that distribute information and make, sell, and integrate network equipment accounts for another few hundred billion dollars of economic activity.

The three major industry groups of the emerging and relentlessly growing information network -- the creators of information products such as movie houses, the distributors of the information such as cable companies, and those who make appliances such as TVs with which users access the information -- recognize that they are at a particular decision point whose outcome will take them down very different paths. On the one hand, they can work cooperatively toward building a seamless information framework based on the "interoperability" of the framework's many components, a decision that raises the water level for everyone since it will enable a more attractive and versatile portfolio of services that will make the difference in the marketplace. On the other hand, they could allow the swift momentum of information technology to sweep them forward (or away) individually without full regard for the rest of the framework. In that scenario not only would the potential versatility of the emerging framework be clipped severely, but industry fears it would be virtually impossible to reverse.

To develop truly interoperable digital video capability across future information networks means creating R&D structures under which distinctly different industries with different histories, technology bases, and approaches to standards development can work together toward the goal of interoperability between and among network components. Individual companies already have begun facing challenges such as finding means of greatly compressing the enormous amount of data that video information requires while maintaining data quality and remaining cost-effective. Under the ATP focused program, many companies will be able to coordinate their efforts so that the collective outcome will be far more valuable for everyone on all sides of the information network.