Analogue vs IP CCTV.
The honest version of a comparison that vendors usually answer in their own favour. For a condominium, the cabling in the riser decides more of it than the cameras do.
QUESTION ANSWEREDAnalogue or IP CCTV for a condominium — which does what, and what does the existing cabling decide?
Analogue CCTV sends video over coaxial cable to a recorder; IP CCTV sends it over a data network. IP gives far higher resolution and lets one camera cover what several used to, but it needs network cabling, switches and more storage. For a condominium the deciding factor is usually the cabling already in the risers, not the cameras.
The actual difference
Analogue CCTV sends a video signal down coaxial cable to a recorder. IP CCTV sends digital video over a data network to a recorder or server. Everything else — resolution, cost, cabling, storage — follows from that one distinction.
The category has also blurred. Modern analogue standards carry high-definition video over existing coaxial cable, which for a building with sound coax is often the most economical route to a real improvement. A comparison that presents the choice as old versus new is selling something.
Side by side
| Analogue | IP | |
|---|---|---|
| Cabling | Coaxial, one run per camera | Structured cabling, switches, often power over the same cable |
| Reuses existing coax | Usually yes | Only with converters, which add points of failure |
| Resolution ceiling | High definition, with practical limits | Substantially higher |
| Cameras per area | More, with narrower coverage each | Fewer, each covering more |
| Storage demand | Lower | Higher, and it scales with resolution |
| Network dependency | None | Real. Needs its own network, properly designed |
| Analytics | Limited | Where the useful features live |
| Cost driver | Cameras | Cabling, switching and storage |
Resolution and coverage
The gain from higher resolution is not a nicer picture. It is that one well-placed camera can do the job of two or three, and that footage remains useful when it is enlarged — which is the only moment CCTV is ever actually needed.
This is why the scope should state whether the requirement at each area is to observe or to identify. A basement ramp where the building needs a readable number plate is an identification requirement, and it determines the camera, the position and the lighting far more than the choice of technology does.
Cabling: the factor that usually decides
For an existing Malaysian condominium the question is rarely which technology is better in the abstract. It is what is already in the riser, what condition it is in, and what it would cost to add to it.
- Sound coax throughout, and the requirement is better images: a modern analogue standard over the existing cable is usually the best value in the building.
- Coax at end of life, or absent where new coverage is needed: the cabling is being replaced either way, so structured cabling and IP is the sensible choice.
- Mixed: a hybrid recorder that accepts both is a legitimate staged path, not a compromise — provided the staging is engineered rather than budget-driven.
Storage: the line that gets under-specified
Storage is a function of resolution, frame rate, compression, camera count and retention period. Raise the resolution and hold the retention constant, and the storage requirement rises with it. Buildings routinely approve a resolution upgrade and quietly lose retention, because the storage was sized against the old figure.
State the retention period in the scope of works as a number of days, and require the quotation to show the storage calculation behind it. Then verify it at each maintenance visit — see maintenance.
Why CCTV should not share the building's other network
IP CCTV puts sustained load on a network. Sharing it with the building's management systems, resident services or a guard house internet connection produces intermittent faults that are extremely hard to diagnose, because they appear at the camera and originate somewhere else entirely.
A dedicated network, or at minimum properly separated traffic, is part of the cost of IP and should appear in the quotation. If it does not, the saving is borrowed from the building's future fault log.
Lighting decides more than the camera does
A common cause of unusable footage in a condominium is not the camera. It is a scene the camera cannot cope with: a basement ramp where the daylight outside is many times brighter than the interior, a lobby lit from behind, a car park where headlights arrive straight down the lens.
Both technologies struggle with these, and both have features that help — wide dynamic range, infrared, and in some cases a supplementary light that is part of the installation rather than the building. The point for a committee is that a scope of works which specifies cameras without specifying the lighting conditions they must work in has left the hardest part of the job undefined. Ask for the ramp, the lobby entrance and the basement to be assessed at the time of day they are worst, not at midday.
What each means for a funding submission
An analogue refresh over existing cable is usually presented as replacement of an end-of-life system: sinking fund, one line, a clear before and after. An IP project is usually two things at once — cabling infrastructure and equipment — and presenting them as separate lines makes the case easier to approve and easier to stage. Specifying and funding the work covers how that submission is built.
Next step
Nothing in this comparison can be settled from a catalogue. It is settled by opening the riser and establishing what cable is there. That is what a site survey does.
CCTV is one of the fourteen ELV services Occhio Tec lists, and the company describes its niche as high-end condominiums in the Mont Kiara, Bangsar and KLCC areas, much of that work being service and maintenance — which is to say, buildings that already have cabling in the riser and a decision to make about it. The company was established in 2010.