Let’s keep this simple! We sell DCTV. Within this section you can
choose to follow a discussion with one of our specialists, just
click on the dialogue that interests you, and we will go through
some of the differing features of DCTV.
Price! But most important, you will want
to know the cost. The base starting cost is £3000, (VAT has to be
added to all prices in UK.) Add an average installed camera cost,
per camera, of £750. Thus a four camera system will be £6000.
Unlike Analogue systems the pricing is linear, there are no big
steps and the more cameras you add, the cheaper the average camera
cost becomes. Thus eight cameras would be £9000. Now is that it?
No, we can enter into a range of caveats, because it is possible
to buy cameras worth over £2000. Also, they can come much cheaper,
it all depends on your requirements and application; also on the
installation difficulty, or otherwise. But our experience suggests
that this average value will be true for the vast majority of our
customers. And that is all installed, tested, and with training
included. We make no charge for the survey, and leave you with a
detailed map of cable runs, power points etc.
The Buyers Questions
This Digital Circuit Television – is that just some marketing
hype?
Not at all. Whilst on the face of it a DCTV system
looks very much like a traditional CCTV, it’s the guts of it that
makes the difference. That’s where the digital aspect comes
in.
How
so?
Well, the camera set up is almost identical to a traditional CCTV, with the same variety of cameras available – covert and overt, colour and day/night, just as you would expect. The wiring and the power is the same as for a modern traditional system, and in some cases you could use an existing set of cameras and just change the heart of the system to get the full digital benefit.
The digital side is what you do with the camera signal as it comes in.
As you know in a traditional system, you can view the images from the cameras either on a bank of monitors or by cycling through or selecting a specific camera on a single monitor. To capture the video, you have to multiplex or time slice the signal to put it on to a slow moving video recorder – and you know how that loses quality and content.
The signals from the camera are all interfaced to special cards on a PC. There the analogue, or TV type signal, is changed to what is called a digital bit stream. This is the sort of information that computers can store and process.
So the bit stream comes off the special card as the signal comes in.
We can then display the pictures, just like a traditional system, but we also record every camera individually – so no lost pictures and no time gaps – unless you want them of course!
This is an indication of the first advantage digital gives us. True motion detection is quick and easy to implement.
In a traditional system, it’s very difficult to trigger the recorder to start immediately movement is sensed, due to the slow start cycle of a typical recorder.
So either you have to constantly record hours and hours of nothing happening, or you run the risk of missing maybe the first ten or twenty seconds of an intrusion.
The first results in having piles of irrelevant video to wade through, and the second can miss the most significant pictures at the start of an event.
But in a digital environment, motion capture is immediate, and can be set to run as long as movement occurs or for a fixed time period afterwards. And then the captured video is filed away on the PC and indexed in the video store by date, time and camera position. So any intrusion can instantly be captured in proper video format and of suitable quality to use as evidence.
What’s more, unlike with a traditional recorder, you can play it back and even take extracts from a past recording whilst the system is still actively recording current events.
And you can set the sensitivity of motion detection and mask out irrelevant areas so you don’t get alarms from passing cars or trees waving in the breeze.
Yes, that’s the next useful aspect of a DCTV system. We can trigger external events when movement is detected, or indeed the converse – start recording when an alarm is triggered.
This first way is the normal approach. When a DCTV system detects movement and starts to record it can also trigger one or more other events.
These can obviously include setting off existing physical alarms or making a silent call to your existing monitoring service. But we can also activate a number of other functions, like sending a pager or SMS message, setting off a computer program that can be tailored to do whatever you require, or even sending a copy of the captured video off site via a network connection.
Your DCTV system can be integrated into your private office LAN or company network so any authorised person can control and monitor your security system from their own desk or even from home.
You can even securely interface your system to the Internet so you can see what’s happening from half a world away if that’s what you want.
Perhaps the best use of the alerting function and the network capability of your DCTV system is in central monitoring. The power of the system, and the ability to be able to consolidate systems via a secure network means you can offload the cost and effort of centralised monitoring much more easily than with a traditional analogue based system.
We offer our own service in this area, together with the ability to manage the extraction of video and still images for Police and evidential purposes. Or we can set up an interface to your existing security supplier if that’s what you’re happier with.
Sounds good. How can I find out more?
Easy. Just call us on 0845 120 3344, or e-mail customer.care@dctv.co.uk
The
Technician's Questions
I need to understand more about this new Digital security and surveillance system we’re looking at. What can you tell me?
Well, it’s pretty much like any other networked PC application.
We install a central server with some special cards in it to interface to the camera system and set up some network connections for the server to be able to broadcast pictures around your LAN or out over a wide area network.
There’s obviously a lot of application programming and some special data management tools, but essentially, it’s another Windows™ server for you to look after.
We normally supply a fully configured and operational system… nothing for you to do but allocate an IP address if you want to make it LAN accessible, which we then specify to the DCTV server, and you can use to configure any web browser access to the video stream display. Normal password access control can be implemented.
As far as the hardware is concerned, it is pre-configured, tested and we would not expect you to need to alter anything. You may want a rack mounted version, but normally we will supply a mini-tower.
Data storage requirements are quite extensive, so we normally fit an exchangeable 250 Gigabyte drive housing, and provide enough exchangeable drives to cover your chosen archive period. Each drive will cope with about seven days’ worth of video from a dozen or more cameras, and we suggest a weekly routine to cycle through the disks.
We supply you with procedures for extracting video from the server in the event of an incident, or we can perform this essential, but potentially complex, service on your behalf for a small extra charge.
If you’ve been involved at all in moving images, you will understand completely... if not, you must please trust us. We have been working with digital video for many years, and this is just the way it is.
Most importantly for you – it’s not unfamiliar to us, and we can cope!
Clearly we will work together in the design phase of your new DCTV system, to develop the installation and operating procedures.
For example, we will need to decide just who is allowed access to just what components of your new system, and how that should be offered.
If you have broadband access to your internal network, then we may need to develop firewall and NAT rules to allow specified external users to get to the DCTV server, to view it and/or control it.
We will need to establish your own specific working procedures to ensure smooth operational running and maintenance of your new system. Many of the tasks involved can of course be contracted out to us, which you might prefer.
Right. So much for the server. What about the rest of the installation?
The camera and possible alarm system use industry standard components and protocols. We of course supply all the equipment required as part of the system.
The system wiring is based upon industry standard co-axial cable and 12 volt DC power leads. It should be well understood by your usual structured cabling contractors. If not, we can furnish our own people, either to do the whole job, or to supervise your guys.
Camera location will be the subject of agreement between us and your security people, and a detailed survey document will form part of our Contract with you. This survey may indicate the necessity for additional cabling, conduits or power points. Certain physical structures, such as support towers, may even be essential. We can of course orchestrate the complete physical installation of your new system.
Specialist equipment is usually needed to ensure focus and alignment of cameras, and safe running of cables. Again, your people may understand all this, or we can provide our own team to install or supervise as necessary.
Sounds good, but complex. Can you really do all this for us?
Yes.
Call us on 0845 120 3344, or e-mail customer.care@dctv.co.uk
and we’ll show you how, AND introduce you to some of our customers who are the best people to convince you!
The Gatekeeper’s Tale
[purely hypothetical of course]
[Fade in to Medium Close Up – Motherly middle-aged woman in Witness Box in Court]
..…I couldn’t believe it at first. There I was just checking tickets for the ride when this kid comes up and starts hitting me for no reason. So I go to push him away… I don’t even touch him but he starts screaming and backs off and then seems to deliberately fall over.
“Mum, Mum, she’s kicking me” he goes. I’m stunned and this big woman comes round the corner yelling and shouting and she calls for help and people come running and the kid is still on the floor screaming and it all gets so heavy and then my boss arrives and says “OK it’s all on video”….
….. and suddenly they go quiet and the woman tries to sneak off with her kid and then my boss says “Hang on, not so fast missus” and then the Police arrive….
…..and now it’s me on the right side of the Law, your Honour…. When they first put it in I thought it was like Big Brother, but now thank goodness….
[slow fade out and dissolve to fade in MCU bewigged Barrister in the Well of the Court]
Unless I can help your Lordship any further, the evidence of that patently honest Witness, backed up by the video you have seen, closes the case for the Respondent in this Claim, which clearly has no merit whatsoever, and which I now ask your Lordship to dismiss together with Full Costs.
[Cut to close-up fully robed Judge of the High Court]
Yes. Little consideration is required here, having seen and heard the events of that
day. Given the quality of the video evidence, I cannot in all common sense see how this case should even have been brought to Court.
The Claim is dismissed, with the Claimant to pay the full costs of the Respondent.
This Digital system you’ve got… I understand it’s a lot more efficient than the old analogue systems… so presumably it’s a lot more complicated too?
On the contrary!
You’ll find it much simpler to run a DCTV environment, since there’s almost no daily maintenance required, and we can offload most of the regular management tasks to our network centre if you want.
Well, for a start there’s no tape management required. No more daily ritual of changing tapes, logging them in and out, securely locking them up, doing the secure erase required and buying more as they wear out. None of those tasks are needed in a digital environment.
A DCTV system cycles automatically through its disk space – and you can let it run constantly if you want.
You still need to be registered with the Data Protection Authority, and put up the appropriate notices, but we can handle that for you.
That all seems simple enough. But what about extracting recordings for evidence?
That’s simple too.
You can set your DCTV system to be triggered only when movement occurs, or you can run it constantly. Either way, the video captured is stored on disk under a simple naming structure, based upon date, time and camera position. So no more mislabelled tapes for instance! And since you don’t have to stop recording to view videos, finding the right piece of evidence is simplicity itself. Once you’ve selected the video you want for evidence, then a couple of mouse clicks writes it away to a separate file which you can then copy to a CD or even attach to an e-mail.
The videos extracted all carry a date and time stamp, and are digitally watermarked to ensure they aren’t tampered with.
And if you don’t want to get involved in this yourself, you can use our optional Incident Management Service to make those extracts for you.
Well, ideally your DCTV system should be connected to a secure path through the Internet to our Monitoring Centre.
There we can look at and control your system as though we were on site with you. So we can do exactly the same kind of extracting of videos as you would, but without needing to be at your location.
Or you can use similar techniques internally, if you want to monitor a number of sites from one central location.
And if you don’t have a network connection, we can set you up with some high capacity removable disks and simple procedures you can use to cycle through the disks when things are running normally, and to courier a disk to us when there’s evidence to be extracted.
If you do have a network connection, there are other benefits too. Firstly, you and other authorised staff can view the camera displays and the incident records whenever you want. And you get the benefit of a number of utility services that we provide to ensure the most efficient operation of your DCTV system.
Most definitely, yes. Our processes were developed in conjunction with Police Scientific Development Branch and we are approved by them and by the Crown Prosecution Service for handling of sensitive evidence.
If necessary, our people can appear at Court as expert witnesses to describe how video evidence was captured, and how we ensure it’s accurate and tamper-proof.
