Want Hassle Free? Try IP!

A case for IP vs Analog.

Sure, it may be tempting to keep your Analog CCTV. It’s already there and all the time you spent fiddling with the tens or hundreds of wires necessary to connect it, hinders the giant box’s long overdue trip to the bin, right? Or maybe you’re just thinking of installing a CCTV system and are tempted by analog CCTV’s seemingly bargain priced proposition?

Before you waste any more of your precious time or money, we implore you to consider what having these archaic systems really means and perhaps introduce to you analog CCTV’s younger, hipper and far more manageable Xanview IP solution.

The differences are in myriads, but just to name a few:

- You want CCTV to capture footage, but unfortunately, with analog CCTV you cannot see faces, license plates or what that person is holding. Essentially, you cannot use the system for what you purchased it for. Analog CCTV is limited by its design to a resolution measured in “TV lines”, a concept from when TVs used to have actual lines. By today’s standards, IP CCTV provides anywhere from 10-30x the image resolution! Just think, you would need 30 of your analog cameras to capture the same resolution as just 1 single 1080P IP camera.

- Analog cameras require a tangled mess of cables to install, 3 cables per camera: one for power, one for video and - another one for audio. These cables are more expensive, thicker, less flexible, a pain to install and the connection is unreliable. IP cameras connect using a single reliable ethernet cable.

- With Analog CCTV, all cables must go through a central location. This leads to expensive and time consuming installation, not to mention maintenance when one (or more!) of the cameras lose image. IP CCTV allows you to run shorter cables to multiple switches or modems, all of which can be connected to one another with a single cable.

- Analog CCTV’s large loud units with their numerous cables suffer from single point of failure and often lose connections to their cameras at the slightest contact with the unit – even if it’s just for standard operating purposes. This is due to the unreliable connections of analog cables via a crimping tool process. Detecting which of the connections failed and/or replacing faulty components is a fiddly, error prone process with tens or hundreds of cables. All of this leads to expensive on-site maintenance, frustration and most importantly a lack of reliability. Xanview TimeBoxes are small, silent, sturdy, you can use several in a single location if you need to and they are easily swappable.

- If you ever need to connect over Internet, the process often involves setting up port forwarding, firewalls, static IPs or dyndns addresses, then installing special software and inputting these details into the software. You will also see that the access details only work when you are not in the same location as your system, you must use a whole different set of access details to access from the location and over internet. Every time you try to use the system, you get anxiety and expect to see a “failed to connect” error which does not help you diagnose what went wrong. With a Xanview system you simple go toyourname.xanview.com and all the complex details are taken care of by us.

- If you ever need to connect to multiple locations, the above problem is magnified ten fold as you must enter 2 sets of access details per location and go through all of this complex set up procedure in each location. Worse still, when BT/Sky or whoever your provider is update your router’s firmware, you are very likely to lose access and have to start this setup from scratch. All this setup and complexity is handled automatically and all you need to do is visit yourname.xanview.com to access all your locations.

So dear reader, you see that slowly, video surveillance users are seeing the light of day and migrating from archaic analog CCTV systems to modern NVR’s. Still, many are reluctant to consider new technology, but the reality is that NVRs, are not only much easier to use, but are also more efficient, cost effective, reliable and just simply better.

Xanview’s revolutionary “TimeBox” NVR takes the concept much further! We invite you to try the system for yourself just follow this link.

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