CCTV and DVS

Many people still use the term CCTV as a label for video surveillance of any kind. It has been the standard for decades.  As I go into much more detail in my book, CCTV stands for “closed circuit television” which uses the 100 year old analog television system (NTSC & PAL) over coaxial, making them private and not publicly distributed. Typically the cameras were connected directly to a monitor (point-to-point) or a controller or multiplexer. DVS stands for Digital Video Surveillance or Digital Video Security. The primary difference here is the analog video is encoded digitally (1′s and 0′s) and the delivery method over a new and/or existing network infrastructure. It’s video over an IP network, client/server, rather than point-to-point. This makes it possible to view the video (being digital rather than analog) over an IP network from anywhere you have the client software installed (and the network configured). The real value in a DVS architecture is the simple fact that you do not need to run point-to-point connections. You can use an existing network infrastructure as long as that network has enough bandwidth, and can be configured for streaming video (QoS, Multicast, etc).