a) Process where analog signals are measured, often millions of times per second for video, in order to convert the analog signal to digital.

The official sampling standard definition for television is ITU-R 601. For TV pictures 8 or 10 bits are normally used; for sound, 16 or 20 bits are common, and 24 bits are being introduced. The ITU-R 601 standard defines the sampling of video components based on 13.5 MHz, and AES/EBU defines sampling of 44.1 and 48 kHz for audio. b) The process of dealing with something continuous in discrete sections. Sampling is probably best known as the first step in the process of digitization, wherein an analog (continuous) signal is divided into discrete moments in time. Yet, even analog television signals have already been sampled twice; once temporally (time being sampled in discrete frames) and once vertically (the vertical direction being divided into discrete scanning lines). If these initial sampling processes are not appropriately filtered (and they rarely are in television), they can lead to aliases. See also Alias, Digitization, and Nyquist.