There seem to be a wide range of prices for CCTV cameras and DVR recorders on the internet. Can you help me understand why this is?

CCTV is not unique in this. Pretty much all things in life are available in a range of different qualities. With CCTV cameras and other equipment the difficulty is that differences can be hard to spot. This is not helped by the fact that everyone's products are supposedly "top quality" and "professional grade".

Sometimes it's easy to see where the money has been saved. A boxed kit of 4 cameras with 3.6mm fixed lenses is never going to provide adequate protection for a home or office when distances from camera to subject exceed 3-4 metres because you simply won't be able to detect sufficient detail. You need different lenses on the cameras at the very least. Yes, the camera says it has an effective range of 10-15 metres (I/R performance) but not with that lens if you want to identify what you are filming.

Unfortunately spotting the differences between products isn't always as easy, let's look at CCTV cameras . They are made up of 4 components, the camera body, the infra-red array, the lens and the video electronics. The video electronics are further broken down into the CCD image sensor and DSP (or chipset) image processor. Of all those components correct choice of last 2, the CCD and the DSP chipset is vital, they are also the only items you can't actually see.

The companies who manufacture cameras either buy their bodies in from a castings company or have them specially designed and made in house. With the latter option it takes no time at all before a castings company copies the design and so you end up with lots of cameras which look the same but perform very differently to each other.

With the video electronics there are many companies who produce CCD and DSP chips and within each company there are different model ranges. We use a lot of Sony electronics for instance but even within the Sony product line-up there are some chips designed to a price, others with performance in mind. Ultimately they all do the job, some better than others though.

We are unusual in that we specify our own electronics and make our choices based on lots of back to back field testing. The results of these trials often bear little relation to the supposed headline performance numbers from suppliers so we feel it's important to make our mind up based on what we see rather than what we are told, (by someone trying to sell us cameras!).

We could halve the buy in cost of many of our cameras and still have a camera which looks the same and who's headline vital statistics remain the same in terms of electronics manufacturer, TVL definition, lux performance and so on. The problem is they won't work as well in the real world.

So when buying CCTV equipment it is important to speak to the vendor and satisfy yourself they not only know their onions but have carried out the necessary testing and development work before offering their products to market.

It is also important to buy from a company who provides superb pre-purchase advice and after sales technical back up if you are to get the most from your CCTV system. Ultimately as with most things in life if it looks too good to be true then it probably is too good to be true. The fact we source directly from manufacturers rather than via a wholesaler means that price-wise we should be on the ball with all our products. If ever you see something out there which you think looks better value for money than our products don't be embarrassed to ask us why. Hopefully we will have the answer.