Upgrading from Analog to Digital

Like many industries, innovation and development have revolutionized the mobile surveillance industry. From camcorder enclosures in the early 1990s to mobile VCRs in the late 1990s, advancements haven’t stopped. By the late 1990s digital video recorders began to make their way into the mobile surveillance field.

With recent advancements reducing costs, increasing storage size and adding wireless technology, more fleets are making the jump to digital. Seon Mobile Surveillance has a variety of digital solutions to match any budget and coverage requirements, from our basic single-channel Trooper® to our cutting-edge 8-channel Explorer™.

For a number of years public transit systems have been transitioning away from analog to digital systems. The pupil transportation industry, with its greater budget restrictions, is slowly catching up.

There are numerous advantages to going digital:

Longer recording time

Analog systems are restricted by the length of their videotape. For most, that means tapes have to be changed every eight hours of recording time. For a two-hour route, that means only two days of recordings.

In a digital system, recording time is influenced by a number of factors: the quality of the image, and the resolution and the size of the hard disk. Seon’s most advanced (750GB hard disk) system can record over 400 hours at its highest quality setting and resolution. At the other end of the image quality spectrum (low resolution and a lower quality setting) the same 750GB disk can store over 15,000 hours of footage.

Better picture quality

DVRs can create much higher quality recordings than VCRs. The Seon Trooper and Explorer DVRs can record at resolutions up to 720 x 480, offering a level of detail far greater than analog recordings.