Why Analogue CCTV?

Digital CCTV is CCTV that takes advantage of modern digital technology to great effect and that has for many people largely replaced analogue CCTV. Essentially a digital security camera records onto files that are stored on a memory card, an internal storage device (within the security camera itself) or online. This then means that there is no need for large physical storage such as the VHS tapes used in analogue CCTV, and also means that more can be done with the data as it can be analysed and manipulated by computer.

These 'more things' incorporate a lot of great functions. For instance an IP CCTV camera can allow you to watch the footage remotely while VoIP can even allow you to then 'speak' through the security camera should anything appear to be wrong. Better yet is motion detection that means you can set cameras up to record only when they sense movement meaning that you don't have to watch hours of footage of an empty warehouse to see if anything of interest happened. Even more impressive is video analysis which can record only when there is movement that appears to be caused by human activity. This often works well enough that it can be safely linked to your alarm systems so that if the camera picks up movement it can alert you and anyone near. Again with VoIP it can even call you.

So the question is why would people still use analogue cameras? Just as there are many advantages to digital CCTV, there are many drawbacks to analogue - perhaps the most damning being that it can only record from one 'track' at a time meaning it can only record from one camera and could thus miss the important 'action'.

However there are actually several reasons for this, and though they are lower tech, analogue still has a lot of advantages that certain businesses and individuals can benefit from. The first of these is that the technology is simple to understand. For small private shops run by technophobes, installing lots of digital cameras could seem daunting and if anything went wrong they would not know what to do - not so with analogue. At the same time the analogue CCTV will less likely go wrong in the first place, as there is nothing to crash and no way for the data to get accidentally erased (short of a magnet on the VHS tape). Again this makes it much easier to handle for those who aren't that familiar with technology and also means in some ways analogue CCTV can be more reliable. A good idea for those companies with a great digital CCTV system is to get an analogue security camera is backup in case there is a power cut or something else that should cause the digital cameras to cut out.

Finally there is the matter of expense and of course being older, analogue cameras are much cheaper not only to purchase but also to install and to maintain.

An analogue CCTV system actually has several advantages for those news to CCTV surveillance. For the best cameras, click the links.