Technology Connections had a great video about two standards, named PCM, for encoding digital audio as analog TV broadcast signal video.

I am familiar with the term PCM because every time I bitbang a wav file, my media player's wav decoder calls it PCM. So I left a comment asking what the relationship was between wav format & these two standards, if any.

Some rando comes barreling in saying "PCM is not a file format, it's a theoretical math concept" & calls me an idiot for thinking PCM could ever refer to a standard. On a video, let me remind you, that describes two standards called PCM, and never uses the term to describe anything but these two standards.

Eventually what I put together, from several volleys of conversation wherein I tried to clarify my question and this dude just laid on invective in a way incompatible with having watched the video, is that PCM *also* refers to the general concept of digital amplitude encoding (i.e., every digital audio file that's not, like, midi, is PCM).

What I want to know is whether the concept of PCM existed & the standards for encoding it as video were named after it, or if it happened the other way around & people just called everything PCM the way we call all facial tissues kleenex just because these standards were the only ones for a decade. But because this guy refuses to admit that the thing the video is about exists, he cannot answer my question.

I've had mostly neutral experiences with YouTube comments, & this is the worst one I've had in years.