Home Surveillance Camera Resolutions

Camera resolution is one of the most important specs to consider when purchasing a security camera or home security camera systems. Having the right camera resolution could make the difference in identifying a person committing a crime and apprehending them or letting them walk away. The resolution of the home security camera is indicated by the number of horizontal TV lines that make up a picture. Each individual horizontal TV line is made of a number of pixels and the total number of these lines makes up the full picture you see on your screen. Does that mean that the more lines of resolution per picture the better the clarity of the overall picture will be? That is absolutely true if and only if the rest of the equipment that your system consists of has equal or better resolution than your home security camera. For example: You could purchase a high resolution color home security camera that has 480 lines resolution, a monitor with 500 line resolution and a time lapse security recorder with 300 line resolution. The end result will be a picture that looks great on the monitor when you are viewing it live but not so great when you playback anything that has been recorded. Why was the quality of the playback picture so poor when it looked so good live? Well, your live picture was clear because the monitor had 500 line resolution which surpassed the 480 line resolution that the security camera was putting out, so there will be no loss in resolution on live picture. However the recorder that was purchased was only 300 line resolution causing all of your recording to be done at 300 line resolution instead of 480 line security camera resolution. As you can see the home security camera resolution is not the only factor that determines the resolution you will get as the end result. When choosing a home security camera system, you must consider the resolution of each individual component comprising your home security camera system so you can select components with similar resolution.