Pro installer told me I'll never see extra pixels

[Chappie]

I was asking a pro installer today about fitting a new POE CCTV system to coincide with my new 1000Mbps fibre broadband/LAN and when I told him that I would like to see 2560 x 1920 4MP video footage on my 5k PC monitor, he told me not to bother and choose instead 2MP cameras because my system would never be able to display video at higher than 1920 x 1080 without upscaling/interpolating it.

 

If this is true, why are people buying 4/5/8MP cameras? Is the NVR the bottleneck? Are there no NVRs capable of receiving/processing native 4MP+ video and sending it to the LAN without dropping data? For sure, I have seen 2560 x 1920 CCTV video on my monitor from a 5MP camera but when I looked more closely, it was less sharp than when viewed at 1920 x 1080 which suggested that it was simply being upscaled. Or is proprietary client software a bottleneck?

 

I can't believe that my system is the problem since it can play 4k Youtube H264 or H265 video very smoothly and it looks great.

 

Grateful for your thoughts.

[al-yeti]

43 minutes ago, Chappie said:

I was asking a pro installer today about fitting a new POE CCTV system to coincide with my new 1000Mbps fibre broadband/LAN and when I told him that I would like to see 2560 x 1920 4MP video footage on my 5k PC monitor, he told me not to bother and choose instead 2MP cameras because my system would never be able to display video at higher than 1920 x 1080 without upscaling/interpolating it.

 

If this is true, why are people buying 4/5/8MP cameras? Is the NVR the bottleneck? Are there no NVRs capable of receiving/processing native 4MP+ video and sending it to the LAN without dropping data? For sure, I have seen 2560 x 1920 CCTV video on my monitor from a 5MP camera but when I looked more closely, it was less sharp than when viewed at 1920 x 1080 which suggested that it was simply being upscaled. Or is proprietary client software a bottleneck?

 

I can't believe that my system is the problem since it can play 4k Youtube H264 or H265 video very smoothly and it looks great.

 

Grateful for your thoughts.

If you have a monitor that can match the output of your NVR it will work 

 

He might mean your NVR does not support displays for 4k uhd ?

[al-yeti]

 

People boats they have 4k cameras , 4k monitor with an NVR or DVR that only outputs 2mp

[Chappie]

I suspect he didn't know about 4k NVRs. Can you recommend one, eg Hikvision?I

[sixwheeledbeast]

One issue would be the bandwidth of your network when it comes to planning out a system.

If the scene is the same size then 2MP vs 4MP is double the data, double the pixel density but also double the bandwidth on your network. 

You can imagine how this increases exponentially as you increase camera res. It can be useful for a better image if you need to zoom in on recorded footage when looking at an incident.

This all depends on what the coverage is tho, many instances a 2MP is more than enough pixel density to cover the scene so that it out ways the bandwidth and cost of the cameras.

 

As for the monitor aspect of the question (pun intended), you need to consider if the output will support higher resolutions. You can also have issues with aspect ratio if the camera image is becoming stretched on the screen the image will look less clear even at a higher res. Monitors are sold by there graphics display resolution and ratio whereas cameras are most often sold as megapixel which is a different measurement.

[al-yeti]

11 minutes ago, Chappie said:

I suspect he didn't know about 4k NVRs. Can you recommend one, eg Hikvision?I

I don't fit hik

 

It's it's DIY the above can be recommended by any dealer of hikvision

 

Otherwise get a new installer but expect to pay more for it he may be able to get you something better 

 

Just now, al-yeti said:

I don't fit hik

 

It's it's DIY the above can be recommended by any dealer of hikvision

 

Otherwise get a new installer but expect to pay more for it he may be able to get you something better 

 

If you can afford it get a dual nic NVR that will solve any bandwidth issues mostly 

1 minute ago, sixwheeledbeast said:

One issue would be the bandwidth of your network when it comes to planning out a system.

If the scene is the same size then 2MP vs 4MP is double the data, double the pixel density but also double the bandwidth on your network. 

You can imagine how this increases exponentially as you increase camera res. It can be useful for a better image if you need to zoom in on recorded footage when looking at an incident.

This all depends on what the coverage is tho, many instances a 2MP is more than enough pixel density to cover the scene so that it out ways the bandwidth and cost of the cameras.

 

As for the monitor aspect of the question (pun intended), you need to consider if the output will support higher resolutions. You can also have issues with aspect ratio if the camera image is becoming stretched on the screen the image will look less clear even at a higher res. Monitors are sold by there graphics display resolution and ratio whereas cameras are most often sold as megapixel which is a different measurement.

An great points here , good to look into for matching a monitor 

[PeterJames]

More to the point would you need that higher res? Its about the digital zoom and it really depends on the view that your looking at. We quite often come up against people installing much higher res cameras than us. But there is no point in putting a 5mp camera to view a small area all you are doing is using up your bandwidth and filling you HDD up with information that would not really be needed, a 2mp camera would identify an unknown person at around 10 metres easily in a small area like a corridor or hallway, or by your front door. A 4k camera would tell you how many hairs on their chin using digital zoom but why would you need that much detail when you have enough to identify them already?

I find that 4mp is more than enough for most projects unless your try to protect a football pitch 

[Chappie]

48 minutes ago, sixwheeledbeast said:

One issue would be the bandwidth of your network when it comes to planning out a system.

If the scene is the same size then 2MP vs 4MP is double the data, double the pixel density but also double the bandwidth on your network. 

You can imagine how this increases exponentially as you increase camera res. It can be useful for a better image if you need to zoom in on recorded footage when looking at an incident.

This all depends on what the coverage is tho, many instances a 2MP is more than enough pixel density to cover the scene so that it out ways the bandwidth and cost of the cameras.

 

As for the monitor aspect of the question (pun intended), you need to consider if the output will support higher resolutions. You can also have issues with aspect ratio if the camera image is becoming stretched on the screen the image will look less clear even at a higher res. Monitors are sold by there graphics display resolution and ratio whereas cameras are most often sold as megapixel which is a different measurement.

 

Thanks for these good pointers but I won't be having any bandwidth worries with 1000Mbps up and down to the inter web and across my LAN plus Gigabit cabling around the house and probably only 5 cameras - a couple of which will indeed be 2MP but if I can find the right NVR to deliver 4MP I'll get a couple of those too with zooms as I like to interact and I need to find my cat!

 

My monitor is a big 27in 5k iMac and I'm running with a 4TB SSD drive plus 40GB of RAM so I could view almost anything on it.

[Chappie]

45 minutes ago, PeterJames said:

More to the point would you need that higher res? Its about the digital zoom and it really depends on the view that your looking at. We quite often come up against people installing much higher res cameras than us. But there is no point in putting a 5mp camera to view a small area all you are doing is using up your bandwidth and filling you HDD up with information that would not really be needed, a 2mp camera would identify an unknown person at around 10 metres easily in a small area like a corridor or hallway, or by your front door. A 4k camera would tell you how many hairs on their chin using digital zoom but why would you need that much detail when you have enough to identify them already?

I find that 4mp is more than enough for most projects unless your try to protect a football pitch 

Thank you Peter. I do need good resolution as my monitor is a 5k screen and if I view a low res video it's the size of a postage stamp. But I will rely only on optical zoom cameras and up to 4MP. The zoom is for the cat - and for the one time in every decade or two when I might spot an intruder while watching live...

[PeterJames]

Really? I have a 4k 65" tv in the lounge and 2mp camera full screen looks great