WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

The increase of CCTV installation  is growing last years ago. It means that you´ll find changes and innovations everyday. With this article we want to help you to be clear some details about different cameras and recorders.

Now, there are some common CCTV technologies to all manufactures. There are 3 main categories:

ANALOGUE CAMERAS

It´s 1st generation cameras. They allow a very limit resolutions and features. The resolutions is by lanes. Cameras are conected to recorders by coaxial wire, RG59 model. This wire gives a good quality of signal until 150 meters and each camera needs a wire to be conneted to recorder. If we have to do a pixel conversion, the quality is 0,4 Mpx.

After, it started a new way to transmit the signal by UTP CAT5 or CAT6 wire. Its a common wire to connect computers to networks. It allowd a signal froma 300 meters until 1000 meters.

Now, this technology is desapearing. The last advantage is the cheaper prices. The probme is a limit quality and it couldn´t be adappated to news technologies.

AHD CAMERAS (Analogic High Definition)

Although these cameras are analogue, they could get more quality than others, by a coaxial or UPC wire. The resolution gets 5 Mpx. It´s leading some basic digital cameras.

The main advantage is the very good relationship between quality and price. The problem is there are cameras with more resolutions and digital cameras with more features than these.

IP CAMERAS (Internet Protocol)

Now, IP cameras have a great future. A basic digital camera has a HD quality (High Definition) with a resolution of 11280 x 720 px, but you could find cameras with 5Mpx, too.

It´s easy to find a great range of products and different prices. There are IP cameras by 40€ and other by 5.000€ with unbelievable features like: read license plate, identificate vehicles, people…

There aren´t miracles, the cheapest cameras has a low quality and expensive cameras have best quality and features. Today, you coul get a paniramic IP cameras of 12Mpx, 20Mpx until 40Mpx, with a resolution of 2592 x 1944 px.

	Quality	Width x Height	Total pixels
Analogues.	CIF	352X240	84,480
	2CIF	704X240	168,960
	4CIF	704X480	337,920
	D1	720X480	345,600
Digitals.	VGA	640X480	307,200
	720P HDTV	1280X720	921,600
	1,3 MP	1280X1024	1,310,720
	2 MP	1600X1200	1,920,000
	1080P HDTV	1920X1080	2,073,600
	3,1 MP	2048X1536	3,145,728
	5 MP	2592X1944	5,038,848

RECORDERS, DVR AND NVR

The options of recorder are wide and varied. You could find analogue recorders that are desapearing, hybrid recoders that mix analogue and digital cameras, and digital recorders well-known as DVR (Digital Video Recorder) or NVR (Network Video Recorder).

The most important thing, before to choose our camera is to have a good evalutation of our installation. It´s common to find cameras with a higher quality that recorder allows.  You don´t need a camera with 5Mpx of quality if the recorder safe images with a reduce quality.

SCREENS AND MONITORS

Last device of a CCTV installation is the screens where you´ll watch the images. Recorders offers different ways to be connected to cameras. It´s not the same if you watch them by Internet, where we need a great conection to watch them by smartphone or if you watch them in situ connecting the monitor to recorder.

A great combination of high quality camera, recorder and monitor is VERY IMPORTANT to get sucessfull with your CCTV system. If you have ahight quality camera but a monitor with low resolutions, you could get the best of your cameras and recorder.