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as I understand, the IP based surveillance systems are getting more-and-more popular, but does analog surveillance systems have any advantages over IP based systems at all? I thought that the price of an analog system is lower, but on the other hand one might have to buy a rather expensive(powerful computer if lot of cameras are attached) computer, a capture card and analog cameras + cable works are more expensive than CAT5e. Or am I missing something and analog systems do have some advantages over IP based systems?

Lets start with a 4 cam system... 4 images at 320x240 is a lot smaller than 4 images at 1280x1024 or larger. However, you are not likely to get 1280x1024 at 30fps... But the data requirements (Bandwidth, memory, and hard drive) are greater with IP cams at high res.

With IP cams you have to decompress the jpeg for each frame. Analysis and compression happen both places so they are relatively equal, other than the size of the image. CPU load is lower with analog.

IP cams are connected over a shared resource. Net traffic can interrupt a stream.

Cat5 can be used with either tech as baluns are widely available.

Now consider a 64 cam system. It can be done with analog, with some work. (16 chips split x4) I doubt any current hardware could handle it with high res IP cams.

Lee Sharp wrote:Lets start with a 4 cam system... 4 images at 320x240 is a lot smaller than 4 images at 1280x1024 or larger. However, you are not likely to get 1280x1024 at 30fps... But the data requirements (Bandwidth, memory, and hard drive) are greater with IP cams at high res.

With IP cams you have to decompress the jpeg for each frame. Analysis and compression happen both places so they are relatively equal, other than the size of the image. CPU load is lower with analog.

IP cams are connected over a shared resource. Net traffic can interrupt a stream.

Cat5 can be used with either tech as baluns are widely available.

Now consider a 64 cam system. It can be done with analog, with some work. (16 chips split x4) I doubt any current hardware could handle it with high res IP cams.

nice info! In a while I came up with another IP system disadvantage- with lot of IP cameras you have to have a PoE capable switch.

m4rtin wrote:nice info! In a while I came up with another IP system disadvantage- with lot of IP cameras you have to have a PoE capable switch.

One you don't have to have a POE switch, most cams cam run with their supplied adaptor or if it's a POE only cam (there are not many of these) they come with an POE injector anyways. I also see the ability of using a POE router as an advantage.

I discussed the same with a supplier on tradekey but they said, analogue cctv cameras are outdated now ??

http://www.tradekey.com/ks-cctv

With analog cameras being a commodity, there is very slim margins on them. IP cameras, however, have very good margins. I am sure this had nothing to do with it... We offer both, and for some reason they customers all chose analog... (Price?) Lots of "outdated" tech sells for quite a while longer than the manufactures would like. (XP vs. Vista) (DVD vs. Blu-Ray) (Gasoline vs. Hybrid) High res digital systems are very cool. But more expensive by a factor of 5-10.