turret vs bullet camera
Turret vs Bullet Camera: Choose by Reach & Mounting
Choose by mounting position and reach: a turret suits soffits and eaves that nobody can touch, a bullet suits visible deterrence and long boundary runs, and a…
8 min read
CCTV Master
Blog
Buying guides, side-by-side comparisons and straight answers from the CCTV Master team.
hikvision colorvu camera
Hikvision ColorVu Camera: Guide for UK Buyers 2026
The best Hikvision ColorVu camera is the one that matches your site's cable run, light range and mounting surface: coax (HD-TVI/PoC) or PoE IP, 20 m or 30 m of…
9 min read
cat 6 cable vs cat5e
Cat6 vs Cat5e Cable: Bandwidth and Performance
For a single IP camera run within the 100 m Ethernet limit, Cat5e carries the video and standard PoE just as well as Cat6, so Cat6 is a judgement call rather…
7 min read
facial recognition access control
Facial Recognition Access Control UK 2026
Yes, facial recognition door terminals are legal in the UK for staff access, but they process biometric data, which UK GDPR treats as special category data…
10 min read
outdoor cat6 cable
Outdoor Rated Cat6 Cable UK: UV & Direct Burial Guide
Yes, Cat6 can go outside, but only if it is an external-grade cable made for the job.
10 min read
apartment intercom system
Apartment Intercom Systems: IP vs 2-Wire 2026
Choose an IP apartment intercom when the building already has, or will get, a network backbone and you want door entry, CCTV, access control and smartphone…
12 min read
surveillance hard drive
Surveillance Hard Drives: Why Desktop HDD Fails
A surveillance hard drive is a 3.5" SATA drive built for continuous, write-heavy video recording, with firmware tuned to avoid dropped frames and a workload…
9 min read
hikvision access control
Hikvision Access Control 2026: Terminals & Readers
For a single door, the WiFi-capable Hikvision DS-K1T342MFWX-E1 (4.3-inch touchscreen, £278.09 inc.
9 min read
texecom premier elite
Texecom Premier Elite Control Panel Zones
Texecom Premier Elite is a scalable family of intruder alarm control panels — spanning wired, wireless and hybrid models such as the 12-W, 24, 48 and 640 —…
12 min read
hikvision intercom
Hikvision Intercom Compared: 2-Wire vs IP
Hikvision splits its video intercom range into three architectures — 2-wire, standard IP/PoE and voltage drop calculator, and modular KD — and the right choice…
11 min read
cctv for farms
Farm CCTV: 4G, Solar & Long-Range 2026
Farm CCTV differs from a standard outdoor system in three ways: it needs to work where there's no fixed broadband (4G/cellular backup), often no mains power at…
12 min read
network switch power over ethernet
PoE Network Switch Guide for CCTV 2026
A PoE network switch does two jobs at once: it moves data between your cameras and NVR, and it feeds each connected device DC power over the same Ethernet…
11 min read