IPCCTV delivers real advantages over its predecessor analogue CCTV; as we have mentioned many times before, analogue CCTV cameras hit a technology glass ceiling of 0.4 megapixel image resolution; IP has already enabled the connective medium that allows CCTV cameras to deliver 16 megapixel images.

There’s some interesting blog dialogue flaring-up in the VOIP world which hypothesises that VOIP is dead - 2008: The Year That VOIP Died

Of course they are not really reporting the end of the use of VOIP, quite the opposite in fact - the use of IP networks for voice telephony has become merely plumbing.

There is no killer benefit to VOIP.

Ordinary telecoms costs are cheap enough.

VOIP has become fairly mainstream and boring, and therefore barely worth further discussion.

There’s some talk of High Definition telephony (HD VOIP) bringing a renaissance, but who ever finished a phone conversation and thought I really must upgrade this handset to the latest Bose unit so that my chums sound better!?!?!?

As you read the blogs from these VOIP gurus you have to wonder at the similarities, and might VOIP be a predictor of the future of IP CCTV:

• VOIP was special
• VOIP was the future
• Dedicated exhibitions and conferences were created
• Some manufacturers didn’t get it
• Some mainstream manufacturers broadened their hardware product range
• Some focused on the software
• Maybe there were more providers than there was demand?
• Pure play companies are struggling
• Some companies fell by the wayside

This summary - 10 points about the death of VOIP - gives a neat overview.

Another interesting article introduces the Internet Communications Continuum - I’ve never heard it called this before, but it is this thing, this continually evolving connectivity of the cloud that is the vital wave to ride!

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Sanyo have launched a new 4MP HD CCTV camera - their model VCC-HD4000.

They’ve built a rockin’ promo website to launch this new IP CCTV camera (switch your speakers on!).

It’s got a great specification, including:

• 4 megapixel camera
• built-in 10X optical zoom lens with auto-focus
• 16X digital zoom in addition to the optical zoom
• Day/Night capability with IR cut-filter
• Dual stream H.264 and JPEG
• POE (Power Over Ethernet) ready
• SD memory card slot for video storage at the camera
• USB port for direct attached USB HDD
• HDMI port

We’ll be adding this new camera to our webshop early in the New Year, if you can’t wait until then just get in touch …

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Internet CCTV is in great demand, CCTV system owners want remote access to their security cameras.

Virgin’s announcement today of their new 50Mbps internet service to the home marks a milestone in the development of internet connectivity and speed.

People want to be able to monitor:

• CCTV at their office from home
• their holiday home CCTV from anywhere
• their home CCTV when away
• CCTV at multiple business sites
• In fact CCTV any place from anywhere
• And then, check their CCTV from their iPhone, Blackberry, Windows mobile ….

In the early days of the internet we all used dial-up telephone internet connections with a connection speed of 56 kbps (kilobits per second).

In those days you may recall that a picture on a web page used to build in a series of horizontal stripes as the image data was downloaded to your PC from the website’s server. To build a single static picture might have taken several seconds …

When ‘Broadband’ first became available our download speed typically increased ten-fold to 512kbps.

Before too much longer 2Mbps (Mega bits per second) was common place.

Followed by offers of 8, 10, 17 & 20 Mbps …

Today, Virgin Media are announcing the roll-out of their 50Mbps internet connection speed to the home.

Virgin have a pre-existing fibre-optic network to street cabinets which enables them to provide this class-leading speed. From their site:

There are now two main types of broadband. One uses copper phone wire; one uses fibre optics. One was invented in the 1870s for phone calls; one was designed for the Internet. One is struggling to keep up with the growth of the web… the other is from Virgin Media.
There is only one fibre optic network. It’s the Mother of all Broadband.

BT will not be out-performed and they have their own plans in-hand to install fibre networks that will allow them to catch up with Virgin’s offer.

The main driver for the demand in increased internet speed performance is the number of home PC users who are now using their internet connections to stream video from services such as the BBC’s iPlayer - their phenomenally successful service which allows you a second chance to see your favourite TV programmes online.

BT, ITV and the BBC are teaming-up to offer some competition to Virgin.

IP Video needs a fast internet connection to stream video smoothly, and to get the data onto your PC before your player runs out of playback data.

The Virgin offer is potentially available to 12.6 million UK homes, and Virgin are aiming to complete their upgrade rollout by Summer 2009.

The service is still asymmetric, that’s to say it has a faster download speed than upload. It’s important to bear this in mind for remote CCTV applications - as your CCTV system is effectively serving images ‘up’ to the internet it is the upload speed which is the bottleneck. With this new 50Mbps service Virgin have increased the maximum upload speed to a class-leading 1.5Mbps which will prove a real benefit if you can get (afford?) this service at your CCTV site.

This competition for ever faster broadband connection speeds is great news for internet CCTV - it is essentially the same thing - video over the internet OR IP Video (IP = Internet Protocol).

As internet speeds increase, and performance improves, connecting to remote devices (anywhere in the world) will simply become a given.

A fast internet will allow the World to become one large network, and you will be able to use-IP to connect to any media, place, device or service.

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Power over Ethernet (POE) allows you to very simply install network cameras (or other network devices such as VOIP phones) with just a single network cable.

We get a lot of queries about POE, so we’ll try to give you a quickand simple explanation:

An ethernet network is the standard format of network cabling that you use to connect your networked and other devices.

The cables used are commonly known as Cat5 cable (other variants such as Cat5e and Cat6 are available).

The plugs on the ends of the network cables are terminated in RJ45 connectors.

Each Cat5 network cable contains four pairs of cable cores, all of these cores are terminated in the RJ45 plugs, but only two of the pairs are actually used for the transmit and receive signals used by the network for data transmission.

This means that there are two pairs of spare cable cores available within every network cable.

Quite simply these can be used to carry power, electricity, volts & amps to devices on the network.

There’s an IEEE standard governing the proper format and use of Power over ethernet, and the basic version of this is the 802.3af standard. This standard governs things such as the configuration and use of the spare cores and the voltage used being common in all 802.3af compliant devices (nominally 48 volts DC). This relatively high voltage is used to enable the power feed to be useful over relatively long distances - up to 100m. If a lower voltage was used, the voltage drop caused by the cable length might render the even lower voltage arriving at the far end useless for powering the camera.

So, you can take a device known as a poe power injector and place this at the source end (PC, control room …) and route your network cable through the power injector on its route to the camera.

At the camera end, if the camera is a POE enabled device (has 802.3af compliant POE built-in) you can plug the far end of the network cable directly into the rear of the camera and the internal camera circuitry will split-out from the network cable the power that it needs to operate. In this way just a single network cable is all that is required to both feed power to the camera and to take the IP video signal away from the camera and back to the PC or other recording device.

This Power Over ethernet solution makes for really simple low-voltage installations without the need for a specialist electrical installation contractor, or the requirement for mains or other power cables. Hence, you save not only labour costs but also the cost of a second copper cable.

If the camera or network device does not have built-in POE compatibility, it is still possible to use Power over Ethernet by deploying a device called an Active Splitter at the camera end of the network cabel. An active splitter (as the name implies) is simly an electronic gadget which splits the power and data signals from the one combined network cable to the two cables that a non-POE device requires; one cat5 for data, one power for the camera supply. NB if you are using a splitter be sure to select a device which is able to transform from the 48V carrier signal used in POE down to the correct voltage for the camera you are using (likely to be 3.3V, 5V, 9V, 12V or similar) and is able to present the power in the correct physical format to plug into the rear of the camera e.g. 4.5mm barrel connector.

So, as you can see from the above, the basics of power over ethernet are simple, but there are a few potential pitfalls to catch out the unwary. If you need any help with selecting the correct POE devices for your application please just give us a call.

use-IP Ltd supply a range of POE devices.

Further explanation of Power Over Ethernet

Wikipedia

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Megapixel resolution - what do we mean by megapixel?

Before network IP CCTV cameras came along the resolution of traditional analogue CCTV cameras (connected by co-ax) was measured in TeleVision Lines (TVL).

This TVL parameter indicated that if you ran your finger horizontally across a CCTV image this would be the number of vertical lines that you would be able to resolve. Obviously, the higher the number the greater the level of detail indicated.

The highest specification analogue colour CCTV cameras currently available can resolve to 540-560 TVL. Monochrome (black & white) analogue CCTV cameras perform slightly better and the best will claim somewhere around 620TVL.

Just to put these analogue TVL figures in perspective with the current IP camera performance - 540TVL is equivalent to 0.4 Megapixels.

Pixels is a term of resolution used commonly in the IT world. Computer monitors will have their resolution specified by means of a horizontal and a vertical pixel resolution e.g. 1440 x 900 pixels.

Digital still cameras also express their resolution capability in terms of pixels, of course nowadays these too all deliver megapixel images.

A typical megapixel IP CCTV camera might have a resolution specification of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

If you multiply the horizontal (1920) by the vertical (1080) pixels you get a total pixel count of 2,073,600 pixels.

This value may also be expressed as 2.073 Megapixels (Mega equals millions).

It is interesting to note that the co-ax connected analogue CCTV camera has been stuck at or below the current glass ceiling of 560TVL for about the past five years.

In an era when you can readily purchase a mobile phone with a built-in 8 megapixel camera, why would anybody install a security imaging solution based upon co-ax which is unlikely to ever exceed 1/20th of the performance of a mobile phone?

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Dome cameras deliver everything you need in one easy-to-install package.

ACTi ACM-7411 vandal-resistant dome camera

Camera, lens and outdoor weatherproof camera housing all in the one assembly.

In the case of this ACTi 7411 IP camera it’s also a vandal-resistant housing - ideal for those applications where you may have some fear of unwanted interference with the camera (indoors or out).

And, it’s a 1.3 megapixel camera, delivering over three times the image resolution of a traditional analogue camera.

And, it’s supplied with a vari-focal lens that allows you to adjust the field of view to suit the scene you want to cover.

And, it’s POE enabled, for an easy installation with video and power via a single Cat5 cable connection to your nearest network point.

And, ACTi supply their NVR Professional video recording software for up to 64 cameras free-of-charge in the box with each camera.

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NVR Professional and NVR Enterprise video recording software from ACTi are both free to use with their cameras.

ACTi NVR Professional free video recording software

ACTi NVR Enterprise free video recording software

The Professional version is shipped on a CD in the box with every camera purchased and can manage up to 64 cameras on any single site.

The Enterprise version can be downloaded from ACTi’s website free of charge. This version can be used for multi-site solutions where there are up to 16 cameras at each site. For camera counts greater than 16 on multiple sites ACTi NVR Enterprise can manage up to 64 cameras but, they charge for licences for 32, 48, and 64 camera versions - please contact us if you need any further details on this software.

Currently, this free video recording software only manages ACTi products, but you can mix their video inputs from their megapixel network cameras, standard IP video cameras and analogue CCTV to IP Video servers.

Their offer of free video software makes this perhaps the ideal migration route for owners of existing analogue CCTV cameras. Simply convert those CCTV cameras into IP video feeds by use of an ACTi video server. Then install their free recording software onto a suitable PC. Then add megapixel network cameras for better resolution IP CCTV into the future …

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ACTi ACM-4200 is a great value megapixel IP camera, absolutely ideal for indoor applications for schools, offices and retail shops.

Don’t take our word for it check out the image quality from this budget-priced 1.3 megapixel camera in our video gallery.

A unique feature, compared to similar cameras in this price range, is the ability to change the lens - you can fit a replacement lens to give you exactly the field of view that you need to cover (the more closely you clip your field of view to the area you are actually interested in, the greater the number of pixels concentrated on that area, the better the delivered video resolution when you need to review recordings).

Don’t forget that ACTi offer their NVR Enterprise video recording software free of charge for use with up to 16 of their cameras.

As always, we look forward to your comments and feedback:

You can add comments to this blog Post below.

Feel free to ask any IP CCTV queries at our IP CCTV forum.

You might like to subscibe to this blog in an RSS reader (top right of our blog home page).

We’d be delighted to have you sign-up for our email newsletter and allow us to keep you informed of the latest developments in this fast-moving sector.

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All that Olympic TV coverage that you’ve been watching in HD quality with Dolby 5.1 surround sound made its way back to the UK / USA via IP networks:

In order to bring these signals back to the UK the BBC will employ more than 200Mb/s of fully redundant international fibre capacity, travelling multiples routes around the globe between Beijing and London. These digital links are supplied by the EBU and also provide voice and data communications between London and Beijing and include the 16 channels of video over IP streaming for the remote logging operation in London.

Read more at:

BBC

NBC

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Another new IP product to catch my eye at IFSEC was this fully IP video door entry system from Australian company Bellon.

It looks really classy, think Bang & Olufsen style …..

It’s fully IP; outdoor panels and indoor handsets & monitors.

POE ready.

Colour video, audio, and access control.

No PCs or servers required, even the configuration is completed via the devices.

They claim that you can have an unlimited number of entry and apartment units.

A really nice IP networked product!

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