A burglar picked the wrong business to loot Tuesday morning. As he carted off two boxes of equipment from a digital video store, the store’s high-tech security cameras captured excellent-quality footage of him in the act. Saanich police are distributing that footage to the public in hopes of catching him.

YouTube link

If only every surveillance video was this crisp!

This made the top news story on tonight's Chek6 news hour. Apparently the same thief was caught on tape earlier this week, where he stole the actual surveillance cameras recording him. The items he stole in this video are the replacement cameras from the first break-in!!

^^^^
These days, the security cameras are 1080p HD and are connected to a digital recorder. As a result, the video quality is excellent.

And you can get all types of 720 and 1080 cameras for anywhere between $10 and $30 on eBay shipped from various points in Asia.

I have a bunch in my car, office, and around my house that just plug in, record continuously on an SD card, and have 1080p quality that were only $18 each delivered. Came with all the cables, mountings, LED night vision, etc - just required an SD card. Video quality is amazing for the price. Even have batteries in them that run the camera when my car is parked/off or the power goes off at home/office.

For a cheap system, or if you just want a couple cameras in case something happens to review an incident, the cheapo cameras seem to work well for me.

@Inglewood -- can you be more specific about how you found these inexpensive, yet decent quality cameras? I tried an eBay search for "cheapo 1080 camera" and nothing came up like you describe
Seriously though, do you have an old link to one you previously purchased, or perhaps the eBay listing title? $18 sounds good to me for easy video surveillance!

@mr.eous ,

They have even come down in price from what I paid for them...

The ones I have bought for my home/office have the title:
HQ Full HD Lens Car Vehicle DVR Camera Dashboard Video Recorder G Sensor Cam Hot
Seller is hotscotchabc - they are down to $15.36 Canadian including shipping.

The ones I have in my cars have the title:
2.3" HD 1080P Car Camera Dashboard DVR Video Recorder Dash Cam G-sensor DP
Seller is downstairs-price - they are down to $12.85 Canadian including shipping.

Both took about 6 weeks to get to Canada. Fairly easy to use once you get the menu in English.

I haven't had anything that I wanted to save or transfer yet, but you can review both of them on the camera and then save the files on a PC by removing the card - very simple.