A digital (audio) recording device, according to the U. S. Code of Regulations (Title 17, Chapter 10, Subchapter A, paragraph 1001), “is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use…”
Huh? Let’s try this again. A digital recording device is any device that records in a digital (binary) format. There are all kinds of digital recording devices. Since the technological advancements that have come with the computer age, many other industries have borrowed the same technology but may have modified it slightly to meet their specific needs.
As far as the digital video security and surveillance camera industry goes there are basically two digital recording devices that immediately come to mind. One is the digital phone/room recorder and the other is the Digital Video Recorder or DVR.
Security Camera King offers two different digital phone/room recorders, product# DPR-N88 and product# DPR-N308. These two recorders are audio digital recording devices. They work by recording to a storage medium a stream of discrete numbers that represent the changes in air pressure or sound. In contrast, analog sound is created from a continuous wave that represents the changes in air pressure or sound.
Basically using a simple set of the numbers 1 and 0 (called binary or digital format) just about anything that is recorded as an analog set can be converted to digital. There are several advantages to digital recording devices. First and foremost is that digital recording does not degrade in quality over time like analog recordings do. Another advantage of digital recordings is that, thanks to the ever increasing technology of the computer industry, more data can be stored digitally than can be done by an analog medium.
While digital audio recording record the changes in sound, digital video stores information that represents the changes over time in chroma and luminence for video. Once again, the older (analog) method of recording video was, like analog audio, the creation of a continuous wave.
The security camera industry reaped the biggest benefit from the “computer age” when they started using digital recording devices called DVRs (which are also the second type of digital recording device referenced above). In the security camera industry the main digital recording device is the DVR. There are several types of DVRs which use several different methods for storage as a digital recording device.
The most common digital recording device for full size commercial or residential security camera systems is the Hard Disk Drive or HDD. The DVRs HDD is a non-volatile (will not lose recorded information when power is disconnected), random access digital recording device. Security Camera Kings systems’ HDD storage options ranges from 500 Gigabytes (GB) to 8 Terabytes (TB).
The HDD consists of rotating rigid platters (disks) on a motor driven spindle. Digital data is magnetically written to or read from the platter by read/write magnetic heads. These heads are extremely close to the platters but they never touch them. As a result when the heads are directed to read or write the platter spins and the head either searches and reads for magnetic changes on the platter or writes magnetic changes on the platter which is literally a series of 1s and 0s.
There are other types of digital recording devices too. For example, Security Camera King’s product# HC-SUNGL-DVR are sunglasses with the camera and DVR included and built into the glasses. Of course, in this case the digital recording device is not an HDD but an electronic circuit designed for digitally recording the video and audio. These sunglasses not only have 4 GB of storage built-in, but the DVR can also accept Micro SD Expansion memory cards of up to 8 GB.
Well hopefully this article has given you enough knowledge about digital recording devices that you’ll know what to look for and how they work. If you have any additional questions about digital recording devices and how they may apply to you please contact one of Security Camera Kings security experts today.
