Digital video recording has been around for a while now—there are hundreds of DVRs on the market today. It used to be that only large installations or Fortune 1000 companies could afford digital. But according to a recent report from industry analysts Frost and Sullivan, demand for digital systems surpassed that for analog systems sometime in 2002. Digital technology has shown it’s superiority, but in the last two years it’s become a commodity. What’s the next step, beyond the DVR, for end users to take their security systems digital.

IP-Surveillance solutions have emerged as an attractive alternative to the DVR, as they provide a bridge to enter the digital world with the ultimate solution of a high-performance, low-cost digital video surveillance and monitoring. We can offer guidance to the end user who is interested in making the transition from a current analog system to a digital one. We can demonstrate how this move can be undertaken in a progressive, step-by-step manner and review the many benefits that come from implementing digital technology. Now is the right time to take the step towards digital surveillance and monitoring.

Benefits of going digital

For the past 20 years, monitoring and surveillance applications have been served by analog technology. CCTV has traditionally been recorded to VCRs (video cassette recorders), and because of its perceived ease of use and manageable price point, analog was probably the right choice at the time of purchase. However, the rise of digital has laid bare analog’s many shortcomings. Analog CCTV systems are generally maintenance intensive, offer no remote accessibility, and are notoriously difficult to integrate with other systems. Despite these obvious deficiencies, the end user who has invested in cameras, cables, and more, and is satisfied with the current quality is right to ask, “Why buy new equipment?”

Implementing a digital system does not require throwing away those trusted (and already paid-for) cameras. With IP-Surveillance, you can still use all the cameras, lenses, and cables in place through this step-by-step migration to digital technology. And if this is not enough reason to seriously consider an upgrade, examine the TLV, or time-lapse video, recording component. These systems are highly labor intensive because of the need to change tapes and perform system maintenance. Tape wear and tear is an ever-present problem. Furthermore, the actual quality of the images recorded is often unsatisfactory, particularly if used for official investigations. With the introduction of digital video recorder (DVR) technology, the storage media are no longer dependent on operator intervention or tape quality. And with IP-Surveillance technology, the video server and network server represent the next level of improvement by connecting existing cameras to the network with a video server and then storing the images on the network server.