Protecting your property with surveillance cameras has thankfully become easier with the passage of time, it wasn't so long ago that home and business owners that have security cameras in place would have gone to the trouble of hiring a CCTV engineer to fit them.
Digital technology has made significant advancements over the last few years, as digital recorders are now more popular than their analog counterparts their prices have dropped significantly.
The beauty of digital video recorders is the fact that video footage is stored commonly on their internal hard drives; this eliminates the need for you to find a large storage space to store recorded video.
This may not be a big deal for a homeowner who has a surveillance system in place, business owners on the other hand may have the need to store the surveillance camera footage recorded by their systems.
If storing surveillance camera footage is a necessity this doesn't necessarily mean you need an analog video recorder.
Commonly you will find digital security recorders have memory stick ports or built in CD writers, clearly CD's are a lot smaller than analog video storage media such as tapes so you will need less storage space to archive camera footage.
The USB ports on certain digital security recorders gives you the option to transfer surveillance camera footage directly to a memory stick, you can then plug the memory stick into a PC and manipulate or copy the video captured in a dozen different ways.
Advances in technology also make the job of keeping you informed about incidents that occur on your premises a lot easier.
It's not uncommon to find modern security recorders that have both alarm inputs and outputs, such systems can be configured to begin recording when an attached alarm is activated or they can activate an attached alarm when an attached security camera detects motion.
One of the best ways to protect your premises when you're away is to set up your security recorder to call your mobile phone when a suspicious incident is taking place.
Modern recorders can also be connected to the Internet and this gives you the ability to see what's happening on your premises while you're away.
If you do see something suspicious that has been recorded by your surveillance system in such a situation, you can use the opportunity to alert the authorities and you have a better chance of ensuring any perpetrators involved can be held accountable for their actions.