cctv recorder..advice on buying please

austin

the council have decided to turn the end of our street into a dead-end, and this has caused untold confusion with drivers. inevitably, someone trying to re-route has reversed straight in to my car - and done a runner :mad:

think its time to get a cctv recorder before it happens again. ive got a camera and cables, just need a recorder, something like a 250-500gb, but i dont know what to go for or where to get them.

is there anyone can offer me some advice?!

cheers.

eyeinthesky

Best advice I can give is to make sure the equipment is up to the job! There is no point in spending lots of money if the system will not accurately record car registration numbers. You say you have a cctv camera, but will this camera achieve this? Will it work at night? It is possible to use a domestic dvd recorder, but again, you need to make sure it will be up to the job. You can also get a dvr card for a pc, but I think there would be quality issues with these. You mention 500gb hard drive size, but would you really need this? Most cctv digital video recorders have multiple inputs for 4, 8 or 16 cameras, and record the video as a series of still images. These images can be as small as 3kb per image, depending on quality and compression. A professional installation might have 500gb recorders, with 16 cameras on each, recording 24/7, and have an archive of 30 days recording stored, would you need this?
Try this site, cctvforum.com it is full of professional installers from all over the world. Hope this helps.

austin

yes, i have a b&w camera that works at night. would rather have colour, but got this one free. it does record reg.no's, but not when car headlights are on

just really wanted the bigger hard drive for longer archives thats all. im only wanting to run one camera.

pupmaster

You could try maplins or ebay,you could even buy a pci card or usb capture for upto 4 camera inputs which are very cheap (12-16 pounds)

damo24

Have a look at systemq (http://www.systemq.com/pub/newpages/login.html) they do a wide range of cctv recorders and associated equipment.