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Originally Posted by shakran
exactly. Stores can hold 8 hours on a regular VHS tape with a security camera. To get broadcast quality video, they'd first have to abandon the VHS format and go with a miniDV camera, which would jack the price up and only get them 1 hour per tape.
Also, what you see on TV is lower quality than what is on the security tape, because every time you copy analog video, you reduce it's quality - just like when you make xeroxes of xeroxes - each generation brings lower quality - and the tape gets copied at least once because the store isn't gonna give the original to a TV station.
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Well, no, not really.
Most people that still use VHS operate using time-lapse and thereby get anywhere from 24-72 hours (on average) on one tape (quality really sucks though). And, it is not just the copy-copy-copy problem, but many people record over existing tapes so even their "fresh" footage sucks.
About 4 years ago, we saw a new product begin to emerge in the marketplace: Digitial Video Recorder.
The early models came in 4, 8 and 16 channel and had a whooping 80GB hard drive. Based on how you set the DVR: number of cameras, frame rate, frame size, etc., you could get several days.
The price: about $20,000
As the price of hard drives fell in the consumer marketplace, the price of DVR's went down.
Now you can get 400+GB, 16 channel, etc. for about $7-8 grand (commercial-grade machine).
Slowly, we are seeing a boost in DVR sales. There was a time when we installed several VCR's a week, now we rarely see one.
We thought we would see a big boost in demand for these machines after 9/11, but with the corresponding recession, many companies opted to "increase" their security using less expensive means.
Oddly enough, my first client after 9/11 to fully upgrade their security: a dairy.
Even with digital recording, you still operate using time lapse. Average frame-rate is in the teens.