In the second of our videos on the factors to be considered when installing a CCTV system, you need to think about the technology that you’re going to use. Now I’ve uh, gone into this in a bit more detail in, another video but basically today we’re going to be discussing whether you want AHD or IP.

So AhD stands for analogue high definition and IP stands for Internet protocol and basically video is a set of data just like any other and to transmit that, IP systems use the same method of transmission as your computer connecting to the Internet. So which is best to use where AhD analogue high definition may be better?

Where you’re upgrading from an existing CCTV system that uses coaxial cable to connect from the recorder to the cameras the reason for this is that AHD still uses coaxial cable, so you may well be able to reuse your existing cabling if you’re starting from scratch. If you don’t have an existing system to upgrade, then IP is probably the best way to go.

It’s more future proof, and the cable runs can often be easier if you’ve got more than one camera in a location. You can have one cable going out to that area and then split off when you get to the area, whereas with Ahd you’ve got to use one cable per camera,  and it doubles up, triples up, whatever.

It greatly increases the amount of cabling used that then increases greatly the amount of time taken and therefore the installation cost.