It's impossible to get a 100% pristine, flawless digital video file, right?

[JohnnyMalaria]

[quote="deadrats"]

furthermore, if we turn our attention to forces, we see that they follow an analogue pattern, i.e. the functions that describe them are continous.

The key point here is "the functions that describe them are continous". That's a limitation of our model - it doesn't mean that forces are not quantum. And, in the world as we perceive it, continuous approximations of discrete forces are valid.

Either your professors were being deliberately vague or were shamefully ignorant of the 80+ years of work that describe forces in a quantized, non-continuous manner...namely Quantum Field Theory.

[deadrats]

The key point here is "the functions that describe them are continous". That's a limitation of our model - it doesn't mean that forces are not quantum. And, in the world as we perceive it, continuous approximations of discrete forces are valid.

a "continous approximation of discrete forces" is not the same as treating forces as a wave, it's just an "approximation", as you yourself stated.

it's as if you wanted to figure out the area under a curve and decided to use a modified form of Archimedes' exhaustion method instead of fitting a function to the curve and figuring out it's integral.

it almost reminds me of the old .999~=1 argument, yes, .999~ approximates the value of 1 and for most purposes (and under most circumstances) it's indistiguishable from 1, but it's not 1, only 1 is 1.

similarly, the fact that you can describe forces as a series of infinite discrete values does not mean that forces in and of themselves are quantum in nature.

it's like looking at Newton's description of the moon's orbit as a series of continous falls and concluding that gravity isn't caused by mass deforming the space it occupies.

Either your professors were being deliberately vague or were shamefully ignorant of the 80+ years of work that describe forces in a quantized, non-continuous manner...namely Quantum Field Theory.

i doubt that they were being either. one of my professors in particular was a Ph.D. in particle physics and he and i had a very good relationship, but unlike most physicists i have ever met, he tended to be a very practical man.

now granted i am not a Ph.D. (hell, i never even finished my bachelor's degree), but it's my understanding that quantum field theory is a framework that allows large group of particles (i.e. discrete points of reality, a "digital signal" if you will) to be treated as a large field, i.e. as a complicated "wave" (or an "analogue signal", if you like).

[RabidDog]

I would suspect the problems you have on playback are more to do with the deficiencies of the various devices... V limted res and colours and the quality of the screen. The human eyeball has only 2100 rods for each colour yet we see in perfect clarity?

Implication of the prev points would be that avi files of the same size,same res of the same film would be better encoded from a hi-def source rather than a std def source?

Your talking about the kirellian field .. yes it does exist .. but only in the hyper dimension.(in startrekville)

[deadrats]

Implication of the prev points would be that avi files of the same size,same res of the same film would be better encoded from a hi-def source rather than a std def source?

absolutely, take two divx files, both 512x384, both 2mb/s (thus the same size), one encoded from a 720x480 source, one encoded from a 1080p source. assuming each source was itself of as high quality as possible for said resolution, then the divx file with the 1080p parentage would be the higher quality avi.

[edDV]

Implication of the prev points would be that avi files of the same size,same res of the same film would be better encoded from a hi-def source rather than a std def source?

absolutely, take two divx files, both 512x384, both 2mb/s (thus the same size), one encoded from a 720x480 source, one encoded from a 1080p source. assuming each source was itself of as high quality as possible for said resolution, then the divx file with the 1080p parentage would be the higher quality avi.

In other words, the higher quality the source the higher quality the encoded result. Therefore the 720x480/576 D1 transfer off the film scanner will get a commercial quality DVD. This follows for downscale from a 1080i film transfer so long as downscale is done properly.

In general, hardware downscalers such as those in HD cable boxes do a fairly good job producing a result that is letterbox with telecine. These can be directly encoded to a 480i/576i DVD and played with a good progressive DVD player. They could also be inverse telecined and resized in software.

Software 1080i/720p downscalers may or may not be doing the downscale correctly. Quality varies by technique used to downscale. Proper 1080i technique will start with an inverse telecine to 1080p/24. Proper 720p technique will start with 3:2 frame decimation to 1280x720p/24.