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As home and business security moves into the next generation, it can only be expected that the growth of digital CCTV camera systems would explode.

Digital security cameras play much the same role that their analog counterparts in 1960s and ’70s closed circuit TVs (CCTV) played. Mounted in strategic locations, they enable the owners to monitor whatever areas are otherwise vulnerable in a home or business.

By their digital nature, however, digital surveillance make many things possible that analog cameras never could do. Digital security camera systems offer the most powerful combination of features and abilities available in any type of security system.

How Digital Surveillance Works

By installing a video capture card in your PC or Mac, you turn your computer into a DVR (digital video recorder). This gives you high quality digital video compression straight onto your computer’s hard disk. The digital video output from your surveillance camera provides an impressive array of benefits.

Benefits

Perhaps the most popular feature is the ability to view live and recorded video remotely from any computer or 3rd generation cell phone anywhere in the world. All you need to do is log in to your secure, private system and view what’s going on right from your computer or phone.

Another great feature of your digital surveillance system is the ability to easily search your recorded video data. Rather than the long and boring process of rewinding and fast forwarding through a VCR tape to find a specific date and time, you can navigate right to that point in the recording with digital video.

You can even program your digital security camera to focus specifically on some situations that it sees and ignore others. For example, you can program it to stop recording when nothing is moving in its field of vision, or record with reduced resolution. You can program it to notice and send you an email or phone notification if something that is supposed to be there is missing, or notify you if it detects something that isn’t supposed to be there.

With multiple camera systems, you can program your digital surveillance cameras to alert another cameras to pan over to its area for another view of some unusual activity. You can control all these actions of your cameras manually, in real time, while viewing the video recordings from your computer, as well. You are only ever limited by the software and hardware you decide to purchase.

Disadvantages of Digital CCTV

Digital CCTV systems, however, are not totally without drawback. The files generated by computer security cameras can fill up hard drive space quickly. That, however, is where you’ll find the ability to program your cameras to stop recording in certain situations comes in handy. By avoiding recording the vast majority of time, when nothing worth recording is happening, you’ll find that you save a tremendous amount of disk space.

So is a digital CCTV camera right for your home or business?

Digital surveillance cameras certainly offer you powerful features and unparalleled flexibility when compared to a analog systems. And they offer these things with the convenience of being able to monitor your digital cameras from anywhere in the world. If you’re looking for a truly professional-grade system to protect your property and possessions, a digital surveillance camera system is definitely one to consider.