BestMatch Camera Software Released

There are different image sensors, though that's definitely not driving massive price differences.

For even lighting day time video, for the same resolution / pixel count, in our testing, differences are generally minor, regardless of manufacturer.

For high variation light scenes, i.e, WDR, there's definitely a difference, that's why we track which manufacturers support true WDR and then compare across comparable cameras.

For low light, there also can be significantly low light performance differences. One thing we do is track and compare which cameras have IR, which is the strongest differentiator of low light performance. That said, there are differences across non IR cameras. We do not factor in lux ratings, because our tests show they cannot be trusted.

There are variations in bandwidth but that occurs even across models in the same manufacturer line at the same resolution (i.e., Advanced Camera Bandwidth Test Results).

Overall, though higher priced manufacturers generally claim their cameras are better in all the intangibles, that is not what we have found in our testing.

So buyers should factor those in as well as support, but this tool gives a grounding that demonstrations what the actual specification differences are.

Keefe,

It's definitely something we seriously discussed. We actually have the functionality built-in but hid it. The reason being (1) it's hard to keep track of changes, (2) just because a VMS supports a camera, it does not mean / ensure it supports all aspects of the camera.

What we are considering is only doing it for the most commonly asked for VMSes (like the ones you mentioned). Still the other question is how do we track low level support (does it support video + PTZ control + i/o + x, etc.)?

Thanks for the question.

Let me explain how BestMatch and CameraFinder differ.

CameraFinder is for getting exact matches. For example, if you only want to find bullet cameras with IR, that are at least 3MP and support autofocus, use the CameraFinder, because that will eliminate any camera that does not match every search criteria.

BestMatch is for getting the models that are overall closest. It's possible that a 'BestMatch' matches in most major respects but not in a few. This is because (1) most cameras don't have exact matches across every criteria and (2) we use weights to figure out which ones are more important (e.g., form factor is quite high because if someone is looking at a dome, we assume they don't want use to return a cube as a bestmatch).

So autofocus is weighted, but it is weighted comparatively lightly currently. What I will do is increase the weight for that to push the comparison engine to move up other auto focus cameras and down non auto focus.

On the warranty level, those are good questions. I started a new discussion on this here: What Is The Warranty Policies For Surveillance Manufacturers? so we can put together a list.

We used online pricing as a proxy for street pricing. For those that do not have online pricing, we estimated based off MSRP and their discount structure.

In general, this gives a reasonable sense of price differences.

For integrators that are getting heavy / gold / platinum discounts from certain manufacturers, we expect they will be able to factor that in when they make their final decisions.