Meet the New Boss, Way Better Than the Old Boss!

Funny how we forget how bad something is until we experience the better. At least, this happens to me a lot. But I'd be willing to bet it happens to most of you as well. For instance, ravioli out of a can tastes just fine growing up until you go to a fine Italian restaurant for the first time. Your car always seems to drive fine until a friend shows up to show off their new ride. Pepsi was fine till Crystal Peps...OK, maybe that isn't a good example.

It works that way with technology too. Think back...taking pictures with an old 35mm camera or a point and shoot with film used to work just fine. And, I bet you never thought twice about dropping of your film to be developed. Heck, I bet it never bothered you to know you had to wait a couple of days to get the pictures back before there was 1-hour-photo. Now we have digital cameras. Digital SLRs, digital point and shoots, and even underwater digital cameras that make all our lives easier. Now you don't have to wait to get all those pictures developed just to see if you got the shot you wanted. All you have to do is click the review button, don't like it, delete it. Remember taking some pictures and then you had to always take a couple of random shots of nothing just to finish the roll of film? Not no more, Billy! Now you can just download what you want from your camera/memory card and throw them in a folder. Extra space on your memory card isn't wasted.

Old standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio TV was great too. I never really complained about my reception with cable or satellite. I always thought it looked pretty good, especially compared to the old rabbit ears (ironic how those have made a come back). But the first time I saw a football game on a wide screen 16:9 aspect ratio TV, I said to myself, "That's the way football is supposed to be seen on TV." Then when I actually saw HD, I couldn't believe what I was missing with standard definition. How unbelievably crisp and clear the images were and how vibrant the colors were. Now I get to the point that if there is something on and it isn't available on a HD channel, I probably won't watch it.

So we get used to how things are and just expect them to be that way until the newer/better is presented to us. I think this is what has happened in the security world, more specifically with surveillance. We've all seen it. You turn on the nightly news and there's a gas station or a bank or a retail store getting robbed and evidently, this guy is doing one heck of a job because I see he never seems to get caught! Doesn't it look like the same guy all the time? It's just some pixelated image and the most you can usually tell is he's wearing a hooded sweatshirt and has a gun. And evidently he's as fast as Superman because one second he's robbing the place and the next he's out of the frame.

Of course I'm making light of poor resolution and low frame rates (which I'll discuss another time). But it's what we're used to seeing, right? That's as good as it gets, right? WRONG!!!! As with digital cameras and HDTV, surveillance video is newer and better. There are now mega-pixel and HD IP surveillance cameras (and yes mega-pixel and HD are two different things, again for a future installment). If you don't know, a mega-pixel is 1,000,000 pixels. So a 2 mega-pixel camera is 2,000,000 pixels. Most analog cameras have a max resolution of 640 x 480 (with a few exceptions) and that equates to a little over 300,000 pixels, or 1/3 of a mega-pixel. Or to put it another way, a 1.3 mega-pixel Camera has over four times* the resolution compared to an analog camera. Imagine what those video clips on the nightly news would look like if they were 400% clearer!

So why hasn't everyone jumped on this band wagon? For the same reason any new technology doesn't just immediately replace everything out today. Again, think back to digital cameras and HDTV. When digital cameras first came out, they were really kind of...well...crappy. They didn't look that great, the images didn't seem to be any better than prints from film, they were pretty cumbersome to learn how to use, not to mention they were really expensive. HDTV had some similar problems. Not everyone had it, you had to get a special antenna/equipment, TV's capable of displaying HD were really expensive, and there wasn't a whole lot of programming out there that was delivered in HD. But in both cases, technology got better, cheaper, and easier to use.

Mega-pixel and HD resolution surveillance have a lot of those same challenges. For starters, these are IP Cameras (note not all IP Cameras are mega-pixel or HD, but all mega-pixel and HD cameras are IP), so your infrastructure is different. A lot of integrators still aren't educated in networking products and so there is a big learning curve for a lot of people. When IP cameras first emerged, they didn't really look that great, were cumbersome, and really expensive. But now they look fantastic, a lot of them are very easy to use, and price has come down quite a bit.

But one more big challenge is still out there. The public still thinks that they are all watching out for a guy in a hooded sweatshirt and a gun. You as the integrator should educate your customer and explain to them that those images on the nightly news are bad and that there's way better out there...We have the technology! Purchase demo cameras and keep them with you to show them the quality first hand. Show them that just like their HDTVs, poorer resolution should be tossed out with their 4:3 rear projection TVs! Show them how better resolution can help protect their business and investments.

There's one more thing in common that these surveillance cameras have with digital cameras and HDTV. While price has gone down considerably, we still pay a premium for them. The older technology will always be cheaper and the newer technology will always be more expensive. But that doesn't stop you from grabbing that digital point and shoot because it's way more convenient than film. And I bet you don't want to watch your favorite sports team in standard definition. Remember, all it takes is for them to see the cool new thing that they didn't know they were missing.

Analog

1080i HD

*In the example here stating a 1.3 mega-pixel camera has over four times the resolution as an analog camera, that is assuming you are looking at the exact same field of view. Another way to utilize mega-pixel technology is to reduce camera count. If an end user is happy with their current resolution, a 1.3 mega-pixel camera could be deployed where there were up to four analog cameras installed in a given area and that 1 camera would give you the same amount of resolution as each one of the four analog cameras did. Of course I am speaking about 4 analog cameras side by side.

Nick Miller
nick.miller@scansourcesecurity.com
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