I can’t think of a reason why other than the cost but surely it’s worth the potential to solve more crime
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Modern ones are pretty good but usually it’s a cost benefit decision – most times just the presence of these cameras is enough to deter crime. So it doesn’t pay to have really high quality cameras most of the time. Also, there’s the issue of storage. Lower resolution means more storage, and business and public places usually want days/weeks/months of storage so they can go back and look for patterns of behavior, etc. otherwise they’d have to keep deleting their footage to keep recording.
adding onto the other answers, the crime in question is also often far away or in a small corner of the footage, so even if its a good quality camera you dont always get good quality video of the event.
You can get bundles with 4 1080p cameras and a 1TB DVR for ~$200.
You can get 4k cameras that cost $100 for just the camera.
You can get cameras that cost $2000 each, for just the camera.
The more expensive ones can have a better picture yes, especially in low light, but the big limiting factor for most installations is the amount of storage space, or if you have cloud video storage, your internet connection’s upload speed.
1080p might take 10GB/day per camera, 4k might take 40GB/day per camera. If you have 8 or so cameras, and want to keep a couple months of video stored, that can add up. One 4k camera would eat my whole monthly upload cap by itself.
Though it’s also likely that many of these videos are from very old cameras.
Personally, I spend 100~300 per camera, store full resolution locally, and stream a low resolution to a cloud server.
We do a lot of work for Walmart, which in loves camera evidence.
Each store has 50 +cameras. Think of the data being captured in their 10,000 stores. That’s 50,000 recorded hours every hour.
Let’s say they’re using basic HD, that’s 1 gig an hour. So they’re recording and saving 50TB per hour. That’s A LOT of data.
Even a modest department store will have something like 10-20 cameras, all recording 24/7. People generally don’t think of video storage when they’re recording a 2 min funny clip on their phones, but HOURS and DAYS of video take up huge amounts of storage, and almost all CCTV owners are legally required to retain footage for a certain number of days before they can overwrite it.
For context, 10 cameras recording at 720p for 24 hours will piss out more than 1.5 TB of video footage. If laws require they keep that footage for 30 days, that means 50+TB worth of storage is needed.
Until something happens, most people just want to see a general view of what’s going on. When something happens then they question the quality. General overview doesn’t give you proper identification quality.
Also most people tend to only check their recordings when they want something, so if they’ve had a harddrive failure or something has failed they don’t find out until it’s too late. Make sure your shit is working every week.
High resolution video takes up alot of space, so its a tradeoff between how far back you can keep records vs picture quality. Low resolution is likely good enough for evidence purposes.
Also most security footage will never be reviewed you partly hust want to have cameras up so that would be criminals see them and second guess. Many places even use fake nonfunctional cameras just as a deterent
A lot are old, my company still uses some from the 80s!
They aren’t actually used anymore but they are still there broadcasting to old 10 inch black and white CRT screens which can be mildly convenient at times but by no means necessary
I’m going to focus on “solve more crime”
*Actual prosecutor here*
At a certain point it doesn’t do much. 480p is fine, even 240 is good enough in most instances. It is more to ‘get a lead’ or to be part of the evidence unless there is something so iconic about the person caught on camera. Think “Mike Tyson face tattoo” level of iconic.
Often times it causes criminals to confess no matter how low the quality is. It could be grainy and only take a ‘picture’ every 3 or 4 seconds but you have to remember most people who rob a store aren’t the smartest. Combine the grainy video with being in the interrogation room and officers (Who are allowed to lie to you) telling you have ‘right there’ in that grainy picture where it KIND OF looks like the guy may have brushed a plastic display case is where they were able to lift fingerprints confirming the criminal was there is enough to make them confess (when in reality the only evidence may be that grainy footage and the clerk saying that you were the guy
But lastly, because it doesn’t matter. The deterrence is the primary purpose. A criminal who sees a camera is less likely to actually commit a crime. It isn’t as if they know what quality the footage is.
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