Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. The signals from them are not openly transmitted.?They are majorly used for surveillance in banks, shopping malls, airports, military installations, casinos, private homes and other stores. Apart from surveillance, they can be use in industrial plants to observe processes from a central control room when environments are not safe for humans.

CCTV can operate continuously or may just monitor a given event. The recent advancement in  technology has led to utilisation of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) which can provide recording for many years. You can also get email alerts from your CCTV when your system operates DVRs.
More recently, IP cameras innovations have been applied in surveillance. The decentralised IP cameras equipped with megapixel sensors and with support of directly recording to network attached storage devices. This makes retrieval of the footage easy.

The most exiting invention is the use of a mobile compatible CCTV networks. This a new technology that utilises mainly android phones or iphones to access video footage recorded. This is only possible if one has a DVR system that is correctly set up. Mobile on CCTV does not require extra charges; one only needs to have an internet enabled phone with internet access. You can as well view the video footage from wherever the point provided that the DVR has an internet connection. This also enables you to watch up to 64 cameras on a 3G compatible phone.