Analogue vs HD What's the difference?

Images are made up of pixels, a small dot or square of colour so in simple terms the more pixels an image has the more detailed the picture is, as this example below shows:

An image with just 100 pixels looks entirely different to an image with 100,000 pixels.

In one image you can see the face of the car thief; in the other image the face is entirely indistinguishable.

resolution of a 1000 pixals resolution of a 100 pixals

Imagine the high definition with over 2 million pixels. Many cheap analogue DVRS available record in what is known as CIF resolution and the higher end analogue models in 4CIF which is as it says is 4 times the quality of CIF. HD on the other hand records at a massive 20x the CIF quality, here are the actual facts below.

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 – alien TVI DVRs
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