In the last few years, it has become a cliche of the security industry to declare – practically in every surveillance related speech or article – that analogue technology is dead.
Though this is true on a broader sense, as analogue technology is certainly reaching its twilight stage, the doomsday visions of the most fervent digital prophets are over-exaggerated to say the least.
True enough, there has been no reason to invest in analogue technology in the last few years – analogue surveillance cameras lack in quality compared to even the most basic of IP cameras, and analogue video recorders have been obsolete purchases for over a decade.
However, though the salesmen of purely digital solutions preach otherwise, the situation is not hopeless for those who have already installed analogue systems and are worrying about the expenses and problems of upgrading them to the digital age.
Today, most surveillance solutions are sold as purely digital and manufacturer dependent. These solutions have major downsides. Firstly, upgrading from an analogue system to a purely digital one can be an extremely expensive project due to secondary costs; not only do the cameras need to be replaced, but the whole infrastructure starting with cabling will need upgrading.
Secondly, dependency on a specific manufacturer will inevitably add cumulative expenses and shorten the lifespan of the solution – even in the case of larger, well known manufacturers. Sudden changes in manufacturing lines or corporate fusions can alter or discontinue the product lines, causing a situation in which future updates to a surveillance system can become expensive and complicated.
Due to these problems, most digital solutions are neither future proof nor compatible with the past – a dangerous and expensive combination, which ties the solutions tightly to their purchase dates.
Manufacturer independence
Both of the problems above tend to stem from the same source: proprietary dependencies. As long as surveillance systems are based on manufacturer dependent hardware, all technology upgrades will mean upgrading the whole system at the same time. It will also mean that only small updates can be performed at a time without upgrading the system completely.
In addition to the source, both problems share a solution – manufacturer independency. While manufacturer dependent systems will, in most cases, require the change of the entire system when the system is upgraded from analogue to digital, manufacturer independent updates will allow the system to be upgraded partially, one step at a time. This enables the creation of surveillance solutions with a mix of analogue and IP cameras ranging from low end models to high end megapixel class cameras.
Likewise, manufacturer independency insures the surveillance system against the future. It would be short sighted to think that the technology revolutions stop with IP cameras or even at the megapixel revolution. Whether the next surveillance revolution will come with reasonably priced automated character recognition, reliable tracking systems, or a next generation of digital cameras, it will arrive – and when it does, manufacturer dependency will, yet again, mean upgrading the whole system in comparison to upgrading only the necessary parts of the system as enabled by manufacturer independent system architecture.
But what does ‘proprietary free’ mean?
Proprietary free surveillance solutions are based on digital video recorders unaffiliated with any specific equipment manufacturer.
Proprietary free DVRs can be divided into two castes: firstly, manufacturer independent DVRs, and secondly, manufacturer and technology independent DVRs. The first caste functions with cameras from multiple hardware manufacturers, while the latter is, in addition, able to simultaneously support both analogue and digital technology.
In addition to cameras, support for other security devices such as analogue and digital microphones, magnetic locks, alarm contacts or text recognition can be added on a manufacturer independent basis.
Hybrid solutions
As digitalization is spreading across the surveillance industry, a multitude of surveillance systems face major updates in the near future.
The surveillance upgrade projects can be divided into four categories:
In all four cases, avoiding the “proprietary cage” will lessen the upgrade costs sharply by enabling a wider scale of choice for equipment connected to the system.
In the first two cases, the savings that result from switching to a manufacturer independent solution accumulate from the direct upgrade costs, as the systems can be upgraded through a hybrid phase: by first upgrading to a DVR that can support both analogue and digital cameras, the cameras can be updated to IP models even one at a time, if necessary.
In the latter two cases, the direct savings result mainly from the wider selection of cameras and security equipment with a more flexible price range.
However, as large as the direct savings may seem, the indirect savings resulting can be considerably higher.
By manufacturer independence, the system has a certain insurance against future developments.
In the third case, this means simply that when new cameras are released, the upgrade process is not restricted to a limited selection and price range by a specific manufacturer.
In the fourth case, the cost savings may be even more consequential, as it may be that the specific manufacturer will not include the desired technology to its product portfolio, which will mean that either the system cannot be expanded in the future, or the expansion process will require a special customization project.
Skipping directly to megapixel quality
One of the main advantages offered by proprietary free digital video recorders is the ability to skip unnecessary technological stages while upgrading the surveillance system in stages.
In practice, and in the current situation, this means skipping the basic IP camera range while retaining the choice of upgrading the system to megapixel quality one camera at a time.
Naturally, not all systems need to be upgraded completely, and in some cases it can be sufficient to upgrade an analogue system only partially with one or few high end IP cameras, using both technologies hand in hand.
One example of these kinds of hybrid systems are the “1+X” solutions, in which an analogue surveillance system is augmented with a DVR and a single megapixel quality IP camera. In these systems, the analogue cameras are used for motion detection and automatic alarm functions, in which analogue technology is sufficient, while a strategically placed megapixel quality camera is used to take detailed images of people or incidents. “1+X” solutions function best in small, controlled environments in which a single high end camera can control the exits or a specific area of interest.
In larger or more accessible environments, hybrid solutions can be created by replacing critical analogue cameras with high end IP cameras. In most cases, replacing just a small number of analogue cameras is enough – as with the “1+X” solutions, most analogue cameras can function mainly as motion detection tools and automatic alarm triggers, while the high end IP cameras can be used for capturing detailed pictures. In these solutions, the remaining analogue cameras can be updated one at a time, or replaced or augmented by other surveillance equipment such as microphones or other alarm input devices.
The proprietary cage
At the moment, as the security industry is reaching towards digitalization and megapixel quality, two of the largest steps taken in surveillance technology in decades, the proprietary cage can prove fatal to security upgrades – creating both financial risks and security risks as system upgrades are delayed due to their cost or by waiting for specific product releases in the manufacturer’s product portfolio.
However, the upgrade clouds have a shiny silver lining. As system upgrades are on the horizon for all analogue and low end surveillance systems, it enables the economic re-evaluation of the systems with controlled and phased upgrades through proprietary free solutions.
This method creates economic and future proof surveillance with just a fraction of the price of their manufacturer dependent counterparts.
great paper .
easy to understand