IP Video - More Than Just HD?

View video from anywhere, scalability and a future-proofed system. There's more than just pixels when it comes to IP Video.

High Definition (HD) broadcast video has been around for some time now. Although slow to take off, now HD televisions are commonplace. However, in the world of video security, upgrading from Standard Definition (SD) to HD video it turns out has been slower than originally thought. IMS reported that out of an estimated 245 million installed security cameras worldwide, less than 5 million are HD. So why are people not upgrading to HD?

Well, let's think about why people upgraded to HD for their home televisions..

First, you get more pixels, more detail. That's great, but the driving factor is content. Good content has resulted in people upgrading to HD. That content could be your favourite sports, or maybe it's movies.

Second is the form factor. HD televisions give bigger screens but are fraction of the size of SD CRT televisions. Remember your old 32"" CRT television and how you nearly broke your back lifting it? Compare that to the latest 60""+ TVs that are razor thin.

But enough about televisions, let's look at video security.

If someone has already installed SD cameras, what real benefit will it give them upgrading to HD? You get more pixels, but what is the camera looking at? What is the content? If the camera isn't looking at much, more pixels isn't going to make much difference!

So maybe we need to talk about the other benefits that can come from migrating to HD, in particular migrating to IP video.

With IP video, you get additional benefits like being able to view video remotely, opening up the security video to more departments outside of security. Why not give access to Human Resources, Operations? Once the camera is on the network, you can view it from anywhere - any number of times!

And you can keep your old cameras with IP. Use an encoder to convert the analog camera signal to IP and you can get all of the benefits of IP, without the cost of upgrading the camera.

One more benefit is scalability. With an IP system you can have any number of cameras and you can easily add more cameras.

So maybe the security industry needs to look at the benefits of beyond ""more pixels"" in order to convince the owners of those 240 million cameras to upgrade their system?

If you're interested in learning more about analog, HD or the benefits of IP systems then why not watch this short YouTube video?