Video display for CCTV feeds?

[GregSpev]

Hey y'all. I work for the student union here at school, and we have a large ballroom that can be partitioned off into 2-3 small rooms. In the middle room, we have a tech booth with all the amps, boards, etc. Currently, the CCTV system we use consists of a camera in 4 of the 5 rooms (Ballrooms AB and CD are on the sides of E) that feed into an old tube monitor in the booth. Since that has been on the fritz lately, we haven't been able to monitor what's going on when there's an event in the side ballrooms and the walls are closed. SO...I was thinking this might be a good time to upgrade the system and give each of the four feeds its own display in the booth so we could continually have coverage.

Anybody know of any good brands for this type of thing? Should we go touchscreen or not? One display with four slots or four separate displays?

Thanks!

 

[SHARYNF]

Are you looking at just using these more in surveillance mode? Do you have a size/space restriction? You can get a unit that will take the 4 inputs and put it on one screen or you could use 4 monitors, really depends on your needs. Not sure what you were thinking on using touch screen for

Pelco makes a multi input to single display, Panasonic also had a unit that took 4 inputs onto one screen
What sort of budget are you looking at?
Sharyn

 

[GregSpev]

Yeah, they would be used for surveillance. I guess the display would have to be no bigger than a standard-size computer display. In terms of the budget, it can't be anything too expensive, probably around 3 grand or so.

Thanks for the input!

 

[museav]

Some of the same questions Sharyn noted such as whether you want four screens or four images on one screen? And what is the purpose of having a touchscreen, is the intent to operate pan/tilts and/or zoom/focus from the screen or to have some other functionality by touching the screen?

Another factor is the signal and wiring used from the cameras. Is it simple composite video or might they even be network cameras? Similarly, how do they four cameras connect to the current monitor, does it have four inputs or is there some external device that the cameras connect to that then connects to the monitor?

 

[GregSpev]

As I think about it, the cameras are fixed position so there's really no need for the touchscreen.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of wiring we're using, but I'll have a chance to check in the next few days. I think it might be BNC, although I'm not entirely sure. Like I said, I've got to check on the rest of the setup.