If current trends continue, it’s highly likely that High Definition (HD) CCTV will become the de facto standard for CCTV users and providers over the next few years. As with the move in the 1990s from analogue to digital CCTV technology, the appearance of HD CCTV parallels the experience in the consumer electronics market. Here we are seeing High Definition (HD) televisions and broadcast channels becoming the technology of choice and, as a result, taking an ever greater share of the market.
From a security and risk management perspective, I believe that the transition to HD CCTV brings with it a number of benefits. As stated, it allows the delivery of more detailed images than ever before. With this in mind, we’re likely to see HD CCTV being particularly favoured for high risk environments such as banking where the identification of faces is a prerequisite. Until relatively recently, film was really the only way by which banks could achieve the kind of detail which they required for evidential purposes. The flexibility realised by digital HD CCTV in terms of the handling of images makes it much more attractive and cost-effective than recording onto specialised film.
Other sectors were we will find the early adopters of HD CCTV concentrated include retail, corporate headquarters, urban centres and security-sensitive military installations.
Implementation issues for end users
As is the case with any new technology, the advent of HD CCTV is not without some potential implementation issues about which installers and end users should be aware. Among the issues which need to be considered are how to view, record and store CCTV images which are typically much larger than before. One approach is simply to have a closed CCTV recording system whose only role is to store images taken directly from the megapixel cameras on a local basis. The downside of this is the lack of an ability to make the content of the images available more widely by, for example, using an IP connection.
Another option is to link the megapixel cameras on site, via IP, to a network video recorder (NVR) which can sit at a convenient point on the network. Here, care needs to be taken that transmitting the images will not overload the network with data.
With some solutions it’s possible to combine local recording with IP connectivity by adopting a digital video recorder which can readily store high resolution images, as close as possible to the mega pixel cameras, but also offer an ability to reduce the size of the images so they are optimised for transmission across a network. This is the path we would advocate. The advantage here is that a remote operator can call up the images without overloading the network and, crucially, be confident that a highly detailed version has been recorded locally for evidential purposes.
A High Definition Future
There’s little doubt that the advent of HD CCTV opens up tremendous opportunities in terms of the high quality of images which can be captured. Its advent looks set to revolutionise how we use CCTV to secure sites and identify offenders.
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