While you may be handy and are tempted by a cheaper do it yourself installation option, there are important factors to consider. What kind of protection is that system offering you? Is it just an alarm that sounds when an intruder invades your home or is it connected to a monitoring center that will alert police when the alarm is triggered? Another important consideration is how complex the installation is. If there are multiple components that work together to provide home security, it is vital that all of these components are working in tandem and are properly connected in order for the security system to function properly. Do you have the type of expertise that is required to make sure all of this is accomplished?

Security experts agree that professionally installed home security systems are the much better route to go if you want to be sure that your home is completely covered in the event of a break in. Today’s home security systems employ advanced technology that work to protect your home. This technology ranges from super sensitive sensors that can be placed on doors, windows and other vulnerable entrances to your home to motion detectors that can be programmed so they can detect prowlers but not trigger the alarm if they sense small children or animals. This technology works together to provide total protection for the home and is centralized with the home security system. Making all of these elements work properly is the job of the professional installer.

A professional installer has experience in installing home security systems in homes just like yours. They can make suggestions as to where to strategically place the sensors and the motion detectors. They install the digital keypad that connects the sensors and motion detectors with the high decibel alarm and with the monitoring center. Professional installation can make sure that all of the technical components are working together in a proper fashion to provide the best home security option available.

Professional installers will install your home security system in a fashion that is least invasive to your home’s infrastructure. They will also test your home security system to make sure it is properly functioning and is connected to the monitoring center. They will then instruct you on how to arm and disarm the system and how to interact with the monitoring center. One final thing they will do is place signage around your property that states that your home is now protected by a twenty four hour monitored home security system. This signage is important because it can act as a deterrent to criminals.

When it comes to home security, the best investment you can make is having your home security system professionally installed. Choosing a company that offers professional installation is a wise move and demonstrates their commitment to keeping your home safe and secure.

A tape recorder (e.g. a security-time lapse VCR) can record in either black or white and in a variety of frame rates. If the frame rate is low enough you can record all the way up to 960 hours enabling you to capture 40 full days. However in this case the action will be very jerky and it will be harder to follow what’s happening. Furthermore, if you have multiple cameras hooked up to the same VCR (which you will likely want to do), you will only get to record film from each one for short intervals meaning it’s very possible you could miss vital information.

On the plus side, VCRs are very affordable, and also very reliable. Unlike a digital CCTV system, analogue will never crash or freeze and you’re not going to lose all of your data by accidentally deleting it or succumbing to a virus. However if you wish to keep old videos you’ll have to store them somewhere which can prove difficult. Over time videos can also wear out, meaning that you can lose old data.

A DVR however will capture a digital image for you meaning that the limit to the amount of video you can capture is limited only to the size of the hard drive or storage device. The fact that you can alter the resolution also means that you can fit more on without necessarily losing frame rate. Furthermore, by using a digital storage device you are able to record multiple tracks at once, meaning you can save data from multiple camera systems simultaneously. Some digital recorders also have in-built motion detection in the video encoder, meaning that the camera only records when it detects movement. This means there isn’t hours of wasted footage showing empty isles – only footage of actual customers and employees. Furthermore, once you’ve filled your storage device, you can then save only relevant segments of the footage, or transfer the whole lot to CDs, servers or external devices meaning there’s no problem regarding storage.

As a general rule then, small shop owners will likely only need analogue CCTV. It’s cheaper, and as they won’t need many cameras, or likely have to hang on to old videos, they can make do with slower frame rates and chunkier storage. For larger stores however with more employees, or other business dealing with sensitive or delicate information, digital recording is recommended for image quality and flexibility.

On your computer you may have downloaded a variety of videos; if you look at each of these by right clicking on them and selecting ‘properties’, you will notice that some of them are different file types. These will vary from .WMV to .MPEG to .AVI and each has different properties. What this refers to is the videos’ ‘compression type’. If you consider the size (in terms of kilobites or megabites) that an image size takes up, you can imagine why it’s important that these images are somehow ‘cut down’ in order to save space when potentially millions of them are strung together to create a video. This happens at the level of the code (the language that the computer or video device reads), but can be visible in the videos’ appearances as washed out colours, lower resolutions, blurry edges or fuzzy motion. The aim here is to find a satisfactory balance between viewing quality and file size – so that you can store as much information onto a hard drive or disk as possible without sacrificing too much detail.

When recording with a DVR (digital video recorder), this works in much the same way and the videos must be compressed when they’re saved. Only in cases of CCTV, compression type is far more crucial as you’re not only dealing with larger quantities of footage (sometimes hours’ and hours’ worth) but also with delicate situations that require the highest possible frame-rates and resolutions if you are to correctly identify problems. For these reasons, when purchasing a DVR it’s highly important that you find out what compression types it supports (sometimes referred to simply as ‘video formats’) and what the different titles represent.

The two main types of compression format for digital CCTV are ‘H.264 format’ and ‘MPEG’ (AKA Motion JPEG, and by which is usually meant MPEG2). The key thing to note here however, is that H.264 format is also known as MPEG4, meaning that it is in fact an updated version of the alternate format. H.264 video compression format therefore drastically reduces both the bandwidth and storage requirements of the files by keeping them small while keeping the image quality high. Usually however this results in a lower ‘bit rate’ for the video which means that fewer ‘bits’ of information are available per second, but the method of encoding ensures that these lost ‘bits’ are unnecessary (high frequencies for example). With an average set up with four cameras at thirty frames per second and a resolution of 320 x 240 (with motion sensors), you can expect MPEG4 compression to provide 80 hours worth of footage at 20-25 gigabites.

However unlike MP2, MP4 has no government enforced standard and as such does not have universal interchange across codecs of various designs. This means that MP2 is more flexible and adaptable as well as having a higher bit rate giving it its own unique advantages. Fortunately however, today most cameras support both formats and even where they do not file conversion is often available.