widescreen cctv cameras?

[richms]

Why is it that all the cameras still seem to be 4:3 image size? Noone has a square screen anymore, and watching the distorted image on a tv, or else having to pillarbox it is not ideal.

I also find that I need a horizontal field of view more then vertical, so it just seems that widescreen is a natural progression for them?

 

[CollinR]

Good question however I think in the future it might not matter so much. The video is square because the CCD and CMOS imagers used are square, really thats all there is to it. Now you will start seeing multiple imagers working together. For instace 4 2 megapixel cameras creating a 360* field of view, this is a larger format then most computer monitors and would be viewed as a PTZ where you can optionally choose to see a portion in 4:3 or 16:9 and change the area viewed like a mechanical PTZ. Also nicer DVRs support widescreen formats for the interface, usually they use PTZ, IO controls or whatever to fill the extra width.

If you need a 4:3 ratio display for your system I can still get them although it's tougher every day.

 

[richms]

They are watched on my TVs so additional screens wont help unfortunatly. At the moment they are just modulated onto unused UHF channels and I use the tuner in the tv to tune in, so if I set it to 4:3 its ok since it will switch back to 16:9 when I go back to the component that the STB is connected to. The STB doesnt handle pillarboxing of the few remaining 4:3 channels so I am still left switching aspect for that. Doesn't help when watching in PiP since all the tvs seem to assume 4:3 for there, which is ridiculous for a recently bought screen.

The thing is they can make cheap SD handycams that are anamorphic widescreen, even some digital cameras are able to do 16:9 images now, I would have thought that the market for SD res CCD chips was virtually nothing nowdays.

I'm supposing that when I get a PC based DVR working it will be a non-issue since I can tile the images to 4 wide 3 high which would make it fit right. Are there any standalone units that will take 12 inputs and make a single picture? 720 or 1080 HD out on component would be awesome since even with a standard quad splitter you cant really see anything on the small pictures. I have an input card here but its 16 inputs to one capture chip so the result will be a slideshow.

All my cameras are just cheapies from hongkong ebay sellers.