New CCTV trend: NVR – Network Video Recorders
With coming of new era of network IP cameras new word became more and more popular – NVR.
Word DVR has been used for years in video surveillance to mean a device taking analogue PAL video signals as inputs, digitising
internally, and recording them to hard disc.
Network cameras do not use PAL but instead deliver their video already in digital form over the network, requires something quite different – a “fit and forget” recorder that works like a VCR did, but compatible right off the
network with the network camera types you want to use. NVR is a box with an ethernet and a mains inlet connection only.
There are lots of network appliances in IT – firewalls, routers, managed switches, traffic shapers, load balancers, file
servers, all sorts – and NVRs are just new joiners, to that well-established territory.
No-one in IT would expect to have to reboot a firewall, just as noone in CCTV expects to have to reboot a monitor.
This is key to user’s expectations, and is why an NVR needs to be a network appliance, not just a desktop or server PC.
A good NVR will connect seamlessly to lots of different camera types and should offer you networked viewing tools which give you both multi picture and full-screen viewing of any of the cameras.
16 March 2006
