CCTV or IP Camera?

What is the difference between CCTV camera and IP camera?

CCTV stands for closed circuit television. We still use it today, and we consider CCTV to be a traditional technology.

Network (IP) camera is the mainstream technology today. Network camera dominates the market because of its superior performance in terms of video resolution, add-on software functions, and deployment flexibility.

CCTV still holds one technological advantage that network camera cannot overcome, and that is lag-free video transmission:

1) CCTV cameras transmit video footage in analogue signal and connect directly to the recorder.

2) Network camera has to spend time digitising, transmitting through network switches, and decompressing before reaching the recoding medium such as hard drive disks. All these works that network cameras have to go through translate into approximately a one to two seconds of delay between real time and video footage recording.

In practice today, unless you have a special need, network camera usually applies better than CCTV cameras.