In its truest form, a CCTV camera is an analog video camera that transmits signals via coaxial cable to a single central location for monitoring, recording, and video analysis. While the recent trend is a push towards IP network cameras, CCTV cameras are still widely used, and offer a cost-effective answer to many common surveillance scenarios.  CCTV technology has been around since the 1940's, and became a major player in the security industry around 1970.

The technology is tried and true, and there are CCTV security camera models for virtually any surveillance application. The two main categories of CCTV cameras are fixed cameras and pan/tilt/zoom models which can rotate horizontally and vertically to cover more area.