DVR CCTV recording v CCTV software recording solutions

 Digital recorders are they a thing of the past?

 Digital recorders have been a huge step forward for the CCTV industry. When they first appeared to the mass market seven years or so ago they were hailed as the ultimate recording solution. To some degree this is true however they do have limitations and the black box is slowly but surely about to give way to VMS CCTV software as the primary way of recording CCTV images.

In the beginning.

At first the DVR’s that hit the market place were small 4 or 9 way boxes with what would now be considered  ludicrously small hard drives around 40 – 80 gig. They tended to be unstable and fail with relative frequency something that gave Security installers quite a headache in the early days. Things however moved fast. Soon remote connectivity became a must have feature as broadband begun to become more wide spread and IT managers got less and less concerned about streaming the data across their internal networks.

Front end CCTV software.

 CCTV software for DVR’s began to look and behave in a more user friendly way and once the central stations moved to remotely monitor some of the DVRs out there, it seemed that this technology would be here to stay.

Things change so fast.

Things however have suddenly shifted to a different level . This is being driven by IP camera solutions especially HD CCTV and Megapixel IP cameras. CCTV software in the form of VMS is quietly becoming the preferred way forward for those who appreciate the benefits of IP cameras and know how IP solutions are shortly going to dominate the market place. The flexibility and the way that software becomes cheaper the more cameras a system has is going to drive sales but most importantly the picture quality that is quite simply stunning will persuade customers to invest in the IP way forward.

Is it the end for DVR CCTV recording solutions?

So is it shortly going to be the end for the black box DVR , well quite simply no. The DVR is still a relatively cheap purchase and many smaller installations simply do not require the sophistication and larger costs of Megapixel IP security cameras and the accompanying CCTV software. So we are are a long way from seeing the discontinuation of the DVR CCTV solution but the amount of investment and development from manufacturers will start to fall away in favour of  various CCTV software products.