What is a CCTV Digital Video Recorder?

You will be familiar with the term Digital Video Recorder (DVR) as the latest technology for recording your favourite TV programme or for recording a film while you’re out. DVRs are similar to a VCR except they have a lot more functions and they don’t need a tape as it records straight to a hard drive. This is great, particularly with CCTV recording, as it means you can record a lot more footage and don’t have to worry about changing tapes.

A CCTV DVR will record the footage from your security cameras and store it on its hard drive so you can view it all in one place. This means you can place your cameras all around the house, office or warehouse in activity hotspots and then view the footage later.

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A CCTV Digital Video Recorder can have many functions such as motion detection, recording on a schedule, connecting to the internet so you can view the footage from your smartphone or computer and much more.

Our DVRs are either 4, 8 or 16 channels which refers to the number of cameras it will connect to. This means a 16 channel DVR will record footage from up to 16 cameras which makes it ideal if you have a large property which will require lots of strategically placed cameras to make sure you catch all of the action.

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Digital Video Recorders can have different sized hard drives and the one you choose will depend on the amount of cameras you have, how often it will be recording and the quality you want to record at. If you’re not sure what you need then it’s worth giving one of our experts a call and they can help: 0117 325 2470 or email info@spycameracctv.com.

Understanding DVR Hard Drive Sizes

These are placed in order smallest to largest, so bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. This is a rough overview which should help with understanding the different hard drive sizes, have a chat with our CCTV experts here at SpyCameraCCTV about which size hard drive will be suited for you.

1 KB (kilobyte) = 1024 bytes

1 MB (megabyte) = 1024 kilobytes

1 GB (gigabyte) = 1024 megabytes

1 TB (terabyte) = 1024 gigabytes