The future in high-definition

High-definition television images offer ultra-sharp images of the antennae on an ant, the hair on a tennis ball and the pain on a footballer's face. With access to applications by the thousand, mobile phones have ceased to be mere phones, but have become pocket computers.

And both offer clear signposts to the future quality of images captured and analysed by the surveillance industry, according to one of the leading companies in the field.

"There is no need to ask how sophisticated surveillance systems of the future will be, because the answer is all around us - in our homes, in our offices, and in our pockets," says Phil Doyle, UK & Ireland managing director of IT company Axis Communications, which was established 25 years ago last year.

It's the market's eagerness to embrace the technology which makes pin-sharp television images the norm, and the apparent insatiable desire for ever more mobile phone 'apps' which has driven forward availability of that technology - with both coming together in the surveillance industry.

"We're introducing new cameras on a bi-monthly basis, and they're now close to broadcast standard, recording detail invisible to the naked eye," says Mr Doyle. "In fact we have done some outside broadcasting with them for short times."

These developments are activities in parallel; on the one hand the creation of more sophisticated technology and the way it fits together, and on the other the things developers are encouraged to do with it.

Working with Sony, Bosch and others, Axis Communications created ONVIF (the open network video interface forum) in 2008, which is open to all companies interested in communications between network cameras and network recorders. That means third party developers are able to create software for manufacturers' equipment, just as in the mobile telephone industry.

Says Mr Doyle's chief executive Ray Mauritsson: "There are many skilled application developers with unique competencies and ideas. Our open application platform enables them to develop applications that bring extra value to various target groups.

"As a result, it will be possible for integrators and end users to select the best combination of camera and application, or encoder and application, to meet specific needs within specific industry segments." Backing words with actions, in autumn 2009 Axis launched its first network video camera offering ONVIF support.

This level of openness is seen in the scale of acceptance of ONVIF, says Mr Doyle: "So far more than 100 organisations that would otherwise have competed with each other have got together and have a common platform. This is a huge achievement, and this is how the industry is changing. It will be interesting to see how the proprietary part of the industry will work in the future." It's an indication, he says, that security industry technology is converging, just as PC and Macintosh computer platforms have done, for the benefit of end users.

Travelling this route is a means of future-proofing any surveillance system, believes Mr Doyle. "The longer anyone stays with a proprietary system the more difficult it will be to replace, and the more likely it is that the end user will be stuck," he says. "It's the same as it was in IT. Think back to the IBM days, or RML in the seventies. People would stick with brands, and that limited functionality."

The challenge for the security industry is now to educate a wider public to the possibilities open to them. There's a perceived reticence caused by the belief that high-quality images necessarily require more space on networks, and will slow their operation as a result. Not so, says Mr Doyle. Matching the combined ability of eye and brain to capture and process information, it's possible to compress images by as much as 80%. "This allows transmission over networks in such a way that it won't overload them and destroy other things like voice over internet, for instance. In effect, the image quality will be higher, but network usage will be lower," he says.

"We must educate users on what can be done, and the ease with which it can be achieved," says Mr Doyle. "We're starting to see progress. Once the bigger market has accepted the possibilities, that facilitates development; HD TV has taken off so quickly because it's so much better."

By combining internet access and digital imaging, we live in a world where it's not only possible to have a security camera controlled and focused anywhere in the world, but likely that it will happen - and sooner than you think, given the comparative ease in which domestic satellite TV recording is achieved when compared with its ancestor the VCR.