Comart Systems, a provider of total HD video surveillance solutions, was established in 1992. Its series of achievements created a legacy of excellence. In 1998, Comart was one of the first companies to develop and commercialize the PCI video capture board used for security purposes.
Comart Systems, a provider of total HD video surveillance solutions, was established in 1992. Its series of achievements created a legacy of excellence. In 1998, Comart was one of the first companies to develop and commercialize the PCI video capture board used for security purposes.
Early in 2008, the company launched an HD-SDI solution and was first in the industry to apply it to local projects in Korea. Comart provided the solution for a local government project at An-Yang City Hall, complete with HD cameras, HD multiviewers, character generators and others. Aside from working with the local government, Comart has also provided solutions to the Korea Expressway Corporation, multiple casinos, and five-star hotels overseas. With many projects under its belt, Comart has years of experience providing customer support and troubleshooting for installations, especially HD-SDI solutions. As of 2007, Comart has provided about 3,000 HD-SDI cameras, all of which are still functioning properly at the various sites where they have been deployed.
As Comart requires all products to undergo strict quality control, the company is one of the few that invested in HD-SDI test equipment, worth US$100,000. It conducts product testing at the design phase and again at the manufacturing phase. Since HD-SDI products have high frequency signals, if the signal becomes unstable, it will cause compatibility issues with HD-SDI products from another manufacturer.
HD video surveillance has seen greater adoption due to demand for HD video quality from public institutions, airports, banks, casinos, and large applications to identify faces and license plate numbers. Also, by 2006, there was a global trend of replacing existing TVs with HD ones, said Chang Hoon Seol, President and CEO of Comart. Twenty million HD surveillance cameras are expected to be in operation by 2013, making up 35 percent of the total camera market. In 2013, the transmission distance for HD-SDI signals is also expected to increase, enabling data to be carried over longer distances up to 200 meters. HD-SDI cameras will become more affordable. HD-SDI DVRs will also cost less but grow in performance with real-time viewing and better playback. With such improvements, it will attract more end users.
Comart's latest achievements include an HD-SDI DVR capture board and an IP multiplexer (IPM). Regarded as the industry's first, the DVR capture board enables high-resolution display and records up to two channels of full HD video at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 with H.264 compression. The capture board contains a PCI express interface of 2.5 GB per second and provides an SDK for application developers. The IPM is essentially a combination of a decoder and a multiviewer, able to decode up to 24 channels at D1 resolution in real time. Additionally, it supports up to 32 channels from IP cameras, and with Comart's technology, it can also receive compressed video streams from servers connected to HD-SDI cameras. This cost-effective solution combines both functions, saving users the expense of purchasing extra equipment.