AZ Nomad wrote:

If you were to look at a digital TV signal decoded as if it were a
stream of pixels, you would see something that looked a lot like an
analog TV signal.

Not in the slightest. Do you even understand the difference between digital
and analog? Put a USB signal from a DMM on a scope and compare that to the
input signal and then get back to us how they are so similar.

What has that have to do with what I said?

If you look at the DECODED signal, which would be a stream of numbers,
one defining a luminance level and the other defining a color, and
displayed them using an appropriate method, it would look a lot like an
analog signal displayed the same way.

You are confusing ENCODED data with DECODED data.

Let's take your example, A DMM with a USB output sends out a data stream
of samples. These samples are encoded as numbers, let's say 32 bit signed
integers, stuffed into packets and the packets have USB handshaking and
other data transmission information wrapped around them. Looking at the
USB output of the DMM (which would be ENCODED data) you would see very little
that resemebled the input.

Now if you stripped off all the USB handshaking and control information, and
recombined the packets into a data stream, what would you see? If you used
that for a histogram or "osciloscope display" ala Winamp, the DECODED data
would look a lot like the original signal. (depending upon sampling rate,
etc).

Now, back to the TV signal. Since it an MPEG (any level) encoded stream
contains individual pixels as samples of luminance (brightness) and chroma
(color), if you were to display it as a histogram, let's say vertical lines
being brightness and each line colored according to the chroma (color),
then if you did the same thing to an analog signal, they would look
awfully close.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM