Originally, CCTV surveillance equipment involved what is known as a time lapse tape recorder. This has obvious disadvantages - tapes often wear out and can break, which defeats the purpose of the system. Worn out tapes produce low quality, blurred pictures, or images that are unrecognizable. This prompted the development of CCTV DVR systems. A DVR, or Digital Video Recorder provides better picture quality since it’s digital, and more reliability than a VCR. A CCTV digital video recorder is also less susceptible to the malfunctions that contemporary VCR systems can encounter.

PC based DVR’s

A PC-based DVR is a DVR Card built inside a computer. You use your typical computer case, either a tower or a rack mount. Inside you have your usual motherboard, network card, CPU, hard drive and memory. And of course a PCI DVR Card. The capture cards usually have 4, 8, or 16 video and/or audio inputs. PC Based systems receive an analog signal from all the cameras, then converts the signal to a digital signal and uses video compression to store the data on the hard drive for archiving and playback. The DVR software provides all the necessary functions like recording, playback, searching and archiving. More advanced systems also allow camera controls and remote access.

PC based DVR’s are easier to use and are more flexible than standalone DVR’s. These units are available as kits which you install on your PC or as complete factory built recorders and provide you with all the functionality you need for your surveillance system. Because it operates on a PC platform, you can customize it to suit your individual needs and add different hardware for different applications, including larger hard drives, more advanced processors, CPU’s and memory.

Standalone DVR Systems

Standalone DVR’s are computer based machines which run on Linux, Unix or other proprietary operating systems that are designed to run only one application, which makes the standalone unit a reliable one that does one thing only. Because of that, standalone DVR’s are said to be more reliable, but they are limited in functionality and customization.