Digital Video Recorders

Digital technology has increased the potential for more advanced and accessible surveillance video recording. It enables greater magnification, long-term usage and storage without altering the original image, and greater control over recording speed and image resolution. Using digital technology over the analogue technology of the VCR’s and videotapes, Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), also called Personal Video Recorders (PVRS), create a more flexible security surveillance recording system.

While in the past the DVR has been utilized mainly in the industrial world, home entertainment and home security have adopted the technology and made it more affordable and more applicable to homeowners as well as businesses. In home entertainment, the DVR replaces the VCR. They are used for recording television shows and gives you the ability to “pause live television.” In home security, the DVR is employed as surveillance recorders.

Instead of recording directly on to a videotape, the DVR encodes digital signals right into a computer hard drive. While a videotape offers your surveillance fairly limited analogue recordings, the DVR can copy almost endless amounts of surveillance recordings into highly compress mega pixels. Also, while analogue recording will degrade with time and use, the digital recordings have higher fidelity and perfect visual reproduction, which means that the digital recordings will maintain the originality of the initial signal regardless of usage and time.

The DVR guarantees better images through digital recordings than the mechanical videotape. The ability to alter recording speed and image resolution gives the DVR a step up over the videotape and the VCR. Being able to control speed and resolution creates a clearer image and the facility to zoom in and out without actually zooming the camera, which makes identification of an intruder easier.

Furthermore, the DVR allows you to visualize your recordings via the Internet. A DVR may be connected to the web, which enables you to access the system while in your office. What makes digital recording even more accessible is its ability to be actually integrated into your personal computer through
DVR Cards.

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