Swallowing one?s pride with dignity does not often happen in this industry of over-sized egos, and this week is no different. In the manic battle for PR-share of who is winning the standards war over convergence of PC and television technology, the Bill Gates genie has rubbed its lamp and produced another virtual digital surprise. And Bill has scored a victory over arch-rival Larry Ellison this week that may mean much to him but also shows the software behemoth?s ability to say: We may have messed up getting out of the traps, but we can still win the race.

I remember being told of a conversation a journalist friend of mine once had with Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems. McNealy, in the course of a conversation rubbishing every single industry standards organisation, said: ?The only standard that matters is the market.? And strewn along the paths and cul-de-sacs of this industry since that comment are the decaying digital corpses of dozens of standards bodies. The survival of standards committees owes more to a hatred of video conferencing and the love of trekking across the Pond to ugly American cities to moan, meet the competition and rubbish them in late-night binges, than to what they can achieve.

MS? purchase of Web TV Networks has already driven the knee-jerk brigade out of their digital caves to moan that it is attempting to impose its own standards on the rest of the world. Oracle has failed to deliver, and within days of the US Federal Communications Commission?s decision to allocate digital TV channels Bill had made his Web TV purchase and the race was on.

But he is not alone ? Compaq and Intel are also backing the Microsoft standard. It shows up the internal chaos in some of the Japanese firms, which make both TVs and PCs, when the likes of Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Hitachi are all backing the Advanced Television Systems Committee standard at the same time as the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference and Microsoft decide to back the Digital Television format in the new PC 98 specification.

The fact that the television industry is not backing it at present doesn?t make much difference. The first digital TVs on sale next year will be overpriced and underpowered. How many UK homes will fork out #2,000 for a TV? Very few. And the people who buy decide the standard that?s affordable. But that?s the market for you.