I can't believe no one commented one this.

I agree with the article, for city sized projects CCTV lacks a bunch. It's just too many square feet to be realistic. Traffic cams, weather cams and stoplight cams is about as far as realy useful goes.

They caught the guy regardless of the quality of the video. Ive got evidence with even worse quality, and the farther the object from the camera, megapixel or not, the worse the quality will be. Trust, MegaPixel will not be the solution .. it will help some .. but with it come its own problems.

PS. Cheap Camera, Dirty also.

Certainly CCTV seems to be most effective when deployed at the precise locations were crimes are most likely to happen rather than trying to cover whole city blocks.

If the numerous corner shop robberies here weren't almost always caught on video they wouldn't get any air time on TV.

Its funny to watch that and hear the woman's opinions of the CCTV. Its like hearing every other client I installed cameras for in the past 10 years. They just watch to many movies. I thought the video was pretty could considering where the cameras was placed. I think megapixel cameras will help and It is the way of the future. Its the quality of the install, equipment and a bit of luck that the perpetrator is an idiot that catches the bad guy.

Talking about camera quality, I helped the FBI with a case in NY by copying footage caught on a DVMRe onto a CD. The camera was a box type pelco over 500 lines, facing a glass entrance. The video showed the the bad guy a cross the street with a gym bag that allegedly had body parts in it. No joke. It placed the guy on the same block as the crime and of course time and date. Heard it was enough to put him away. CCTV works megapixel or not!

I read 1984 again last year. Great book. Hard to imagine it was written in 1948 and so many of it's themes have come true or are coming true.

In the UK at least, its probably not the camera that is the problem.

Its the people that charge to much to install a camera (we are talking around at least 20 to 60 plus thousand per city center camera from what I could see).

Its also the people in charge that decide to pay that much, instead of shopping around for better deals. They get only a few cameras for silly amounts of money, when for that money they could have installed a lot more.

Its also the people in charge that decide to put them in silly places, places that dont really need them, instead of placing them somewhere else near by that would benefit a lot more.

Its also the people who maintain them, or rather they often dont.

Its also the operators, in some places in the uk they have even resorted to using volunteers from the public to man the control rooms, instead of trained pro's.

Its also the UK press who focus more on the failures than the sucess stories, enforcing the idea in the criminals heads that the cameras are nothing to worry about.

Its also the police, who are understaffed and overworked and dont have the time to investigate all footage properly (if at all) - and even some who dont bother to check for footage, or investigate it if they are told about it.

The cams themselves are often decent equipment, they just need to be in the right places, well maintained, well operated and used...

I believe the people's perception has changed about cctv on city streets.

After the different terrorist situations you can see on the news what the terrorist look like, how they arrived at a place, where they met, and where they dispersed to.

It can give time of arrival, and departure, and event times.

Amazing footage that comes out of these events.

I agree with you Scorpion. Video surveillance within public areas should be no big deal and it can be a effective tool. The funny thing is that many of the lib-socialist types are the first to complain about “big brother", while they are regulating people to death in most areas of life via “little brother.â€

I am not worried about city cameras, but I am worried about the "whisper blade" blacked out helicopter, and the "mind reading" goverment special ops!

Yea Right!

LOL!

Now that's funny! Sign me up for that training...then I can understand my wife more.

Sorry it does not work that way.

You can read her mind, but you still will not understand her!

With mind reading she will still be one step ahead of you.

Lord knows how they do it!

LOL!

Hah! Good luck with that.