In the Field Lab at Sarnoff, Princeton, NJ 1995 Painting

Philips Labs employees run last minute checks on the Grand Allaince HDTV Transmission System Prototype, before inspection by the FCC's ACATS committee. March 1995 Subsystems were designed, built and tested locally by each Grand Alliance member, then shipped to Princeton for system integration. In order to simplify access, a separate building behind the main Sarnoff laboratory was used, the GA- Field Lab. Sarnoff ’s Paul Lyons served as GA- Field Lab Manager. It was his job to keep system integration and debugging moving along in a timely and orderly fashion. This was much easier said than done, especially as pressure intensified and tension increased as the scheduled ATTC shipping date approached. Every once in a while, someone would power down a system and interrupt work on another part of the prototype. When a problem appeared, there was the usual finger- pointing, and troubleshooting sometimes began by having to prove that a design worked properly, before someone would analyze their “creation.” But actually, this kind of give and take is fairly normal when so many experts are involved. The Grand Alliance, in spite of corporate- level bickering, was for the most part a model of teambuilding and cooperation among technical staff. Some of the design teams had been together for over five years, and now were united in a common cause. Yet each group had a distinct personality; each had their own way of doing things and left their mark on their systems. The video encoder AT&T team hung a yellow tag from each PCB with identification and configuration information. Philips used a laptop running Windows 3.1 to configure and monitor the MPEG-2 HDTV video decoder. Sarnoff transport encoders and decoders scrolled their version number across an LED display; Paul Lyons’s “bit- ometers” displayed audio, video and data packet bit rates. Work days were long. Lunch was delivered to the GA- Field Lab; one fended for oneself when it was dinnertime.

Painting:Oil on Printed Circuit Board

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:20 W x 21 H x 0.2 D in

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