What is CCTV? Closed circuit television in plain English

CCTV is a set of cameras connected to a recorder and a screen. The video stays inside a system you control. That is the closed circuit part. The system records what the cameras see, and you can watch it live or play it back later.

Ordinary television is broadcast: anyone with a set can watch. In a CCTV system the video goes only to the monitors and recorders connected to it. It is not sent out for the public.

Today most systems also let you watch from a phone or a computer, through an app or software you log in to. The name has stuck for almost any business camera system, old or new.

Already have cameras and a recorder? Try Foreman free for 7 days, no card

Almost every system has the same five parts, whatever the brand.

• Cameras. They capture the video. Dome and bullet are the common shapes. Older systems use analog cameras. Newer ones use IP cameras, which send video over a network.
• Cabling. Analog cameras send video over coaxial cable. IP cameras use network cable, and with PoE the same cable can carry power too. See PoE security cameras.
• A recorder. A DVR records analog cameras. An NVR records IP cameras. See DVR vs NVR if you are not sure which you have.
• Storage. A hard disk in the recorder holds the video. How many days it keeps depends on the number of cameras, the picture quality and the size of the disk. See CCTV hard disk: how much storage you need.
• Viewing. A monitor next to the recorder, software on a computer, or an app on your phone. See how to connect your CCTV to your mobile.

• Recording what happened, so you can show it to an insurer, the police or a customer.
• Letting you check the site from somewhere else.
• Helping you work out how a loss happened.
• Visible cameras can put some people off.

Most CCTV systems record and nobody watches. That is the gap a business owner should know about.

• It does not tell you anything while it is happening. You find out when you look.
• It does not stop anything. It is not a lock, a guard or an alarm.
• It only shows what the camera can see. A dark corner, a dirty lens or a bad angle leaves a hole.
• A camera can be covered, knocked out of focus or switched off, and a recorder can fail, without anyone noticing.
• The disk holds video for a limited time, then the recorder writes over the oldest video.

Many recorders can send an alert when something moves. The trouble is that plain motion detection reacts to any change in the picture: a shadow, a headlight, rain, an insect near the lens. At night, that can mean alerts all night.

Analytics is software that looks at what is in the video instead of just whether it changed. It can look for a person, a vehicle, smoke or flame. Read video analytics: what it is and how to judge it and what an AI camera is for more.

If you already have CCTV, a quick check tells you what you have and what is missing.

• 1. Count the cameras, and note the brand on the recorder.
• 2. Look at each camera's view at night, not only in the day.
• 3. Find out how many days the recorder keeps.
• 4. Check that you can watch from your phone.
• 5. Ask yourself what would tell you tonight if a camera were covered, or if someone were on site after hours. If the answer is nothing, that is what to fix first.

We are not a camera maker. Our software installs on a Windows computer at your site in 60 seconds and works with the cameras and recorder you already own: Hikvision, Dahua, CP Plus, TVT, Uniview, Axis, Hanwha, or any camera or recorder that offers RTSP or ONVIF. Read how to get AI alerts from your existing CCTV cameras.

• People on site after hours, in the zones you mark, is standard on every site.
• Smoke and fire, a covered camera and a camera that goes offline are standard too.
• Our own AI models, trained in-house, watch every camera. A second, larger model checks each event before you are alerted.
• The alert is a photo with the camera and the time, on WhatsApp, Telegram or the Foreman app.
• Your recordings stay on site, and your recorder keeps recording.