CCTV equipment resolutions are often a bit mystifying but in essence all the different resolution means is how many pixels are used to make up the picture. The more pixels (small squares of colour) you have the more detail you can display!

Most cheap analogue DVRs offer CIF recording, and the more expensive offer 4CIF. The alienHero HD DVR offers a staggering 1920 x 1080 pixel recording and live display. If you look at the diagram below you can see that it provides 20x more image quality than a cheap analogue DVR!

compare resolutions compare images of HD-SDI and CIF picture quality graph of DVRs
CCTV Resolutions: (PAL UK Standard)
Term Pixels (W x H) Total Pixels Notes
QCIF 176 x 144 25,344 Quarter CIF – mainly for mobile phone monitoring
CIF 352 x 288 101,376 Low end analogue DVR
2CIF 704 x 288 202,752 Mid range analogue DVR
VGA 640 x 480 307,200 Standard VGA output
4CIF 704 x 576 405,504 Higher End Analogue DVR
D1 720 x 576 414,720 Higher End Analogue DVR
720p HD 1280 x 720 921,600 720p High Definition
960p HD 1280 x 960 1,228,800 960p High Definition (Sony specific HD standard)
1.3 MP 1280 x 1024 1,310,720 1 Megapixel – Some IP Systems
2 MP 1600 x 1200 1,920,000 1.9 Megapixel – Some IP Systems
1080p HD 1920 x 1080 2,073,600 1080p High Definition – alienHero HD
3 MP 2048 x 1536 3,145,728 3 Megapixel – Some IP Systems
5 MP 2592 x 1944 5,038,848 5 Megapixel – Some IP Systems