Consumer vs Professional CCTV

There are two type of categories of video surveillance equipment on the Australian market and are both individually designed for different purposes & applications.

Types CCTV Suppliers

Professional grade equipment is simple. The electronics are designed for performance and the price is based on the cost of the electronics.

Consumer grade equipment is based on a preselected sale price which is for the Lower End General market. The the electronics are designed for the Lower End price Range. This is why we see the amazing prices such as $299, $499, $799, $999, $1299 for a 4,8,16 Channel CCTV Kits ; the price was preselected and the product designed to fit within the price. Often the result is inferior electronics that never produce the level of performance the marketing literature boasts.

What you have to understand is that these suppliers have cut every conceivable corner to make these price point CCTV Systems achievable. This does cause a fair amount of problems one of them is generally the operating temperatures of the inferior electronics tends to be much hotter due to the cost cutting on parts such as “Heat Sinks” (which absorb and reduce heat) so the cost of the electronics could fit into a sale price.

This brings us to the industries golden rule: when it comes to video surveillance equipment, price and performance are directly linked.

Consumer grade equipment is provided by brands such as Swann, Costco. They are sold through big box stores and you really pay for what you get because lets face it will the checkout chick on aisle seven be able to assist you when you need to ask some serious CCTV questions.

Usually with the consumer end CCTV the infra red LED`s will not perform to expectation and sometimes you would ask the questions do they have a Infa red because the quality is so poor when viewing at night. The heating problems will probably exist and the Cheap software codec used on the DVR recorders will usually freeze and every now and then the DVR recorder is not even recording thats great if something does happen. If you still believe in consumer grade equipment I am sorry but you will have to learn the hard way.