If you have an analogue CCTV system which is not performing, don’t feel you need to rip everything out and start again, a new technology is breathing life into old CCTV systems without having to undertake costly infrastructure work.
In the UK there are many hundreds of thousands of existing CCTV installations, many of which are frankly unfit for purpose. Every week the police release footage of a pixilated blob or blobs attacking another pixilated blob, asking if you can identify any of the pixilated blobs in the image.
The reason why this footage is often so poor is that older Standard Definition (SD) analogue cameras are recording to a small hard disk meaning the images are compressed, reducing quality even further, and over time the cameras degrade or are not serviced correctly – it’s surprising there’s a recorded image at all!
Technology has moved on significantly in the past few years, and CCTV cameras are now High Definition (HD), Hard Disks are getting substantially larger to accommodate these HD images with little degradation, and even IR lighting has improved.
If you have an existing CCTV system in place, you may be looking to upgrade to High Definition but are put off by the cost. This is usually because there is a misconception that the only way to upgrade to HD is to rip out the whole system and replace it with an IP solution, meaning the cameras, recorders, and cabling all need to be replaced, which is a costly exercise.
This is no longer the case, and there is a technology now available which allows you to upgrade your existing analogue CCTV system to HD, but keep the cost down by reusing the existing cabling and only replacing the cameras that require a HD image (remember that not every camera needs to be HD).
Many CCTV installers are now offering HD upgrades to existing system by replacing the recorder with a Hikvision Turbo HD DVR, giving you the option to simply replace your analogue SD cameras with HD versions which record at 1080p (the same resolution as your LCD TV), with the benefit of not needing to upgrade your whole system in one go. Existing cameras can be left in place and upgraded at later date if required, so you can migrate to HD quality in your own time and within budget.
Ask your CCTV installer about upgrading your CCTV system to HD using your existing cabling, and see the benefits of HD without the cost.