Well, maybe not but I was thinking about computers as display devices.
I can quite understand h/w having to be standardised in TV systems eg HDTV 720p etc

However, my computer display is settable to all kinds of resolutions, most
exceeding current HDTV specs. Given that CCDs in still cameras are approaching
12 Mpixel why is video so constrained?

Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

It is now, if you still have a CRT-based monitor, but those are being
phased out. Once you enter into the flat-panel realm, your PC display
will only have a single, fixed resolution - and pictures that adhere to
this "native" resolution of your panel without needing any artificial
scaling or interpolation will look the best.

The question becomes whether the chips in those still cameras can
actually capture good-looking pictures 60 times a second (while using
those high resolutions), and whether they have the CPU power, bandwidth
and capacity to process and store those images reliably as a constant
video stream. Once you start beefing up the specs of the device for
actual HD video capture, it all adds up. Not only that, but you would
need a new tape format or HDD-based camcorders for storing all that data
(HDV camcorders deal with this problem by using more compression and
standard DV tape, but that approach cannot be stretched much further),
and the necessary interfaces and protocols. Power consumption might be a
problem, too.

More to the point, even if consumers could theoretically be given wild
incompatible "anything goes" HD formats to play with, the industry
doesn't work that way. It needs standards for the data formats,
standards for the protocols, standards for the resolutions, standards
for everything. Lots of tv production stuff is done with a toolchain of
interconnected black boxes from various manufacturers that must work
together in a seamless fashion. That just cannot be done to any
reasonable extent if there aren't common, well-defined, industry-wide
standards and standard video formats. Defining those standards is
usually a slow process, and interoperability and compatibility with the
old equipment is paramount as there is a lot of money invested into it.
(It can't all be exchanged for new black boxes and cameras in a
forthnight. Changing the whole infrastructure to support some new format
is a major effort and investment, so bleeding edge stuff doesn't really
get into common use fast.)

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