Introduction
As organizations strive to improve their Web sites, the importance of making the sites lively and attractive leads to increased desire to utilize video and still images.  And the ability to incorporate remote images into applications viewable from the desktop is increasingly a business priority for many organizations.

There’s no doubt that people want to use more images in their daily work and play activities, whether to integrate video images with business information or to share photos of their grandchildren via the Web.  Broad availability of powerful, easy-to-use Web browsers provides opportunity for nearly everyone to view remotely generated images from anywhere.

However, the challenge is how to capture and transmit remote images cost-effectively and reliably.  Fortunately, vendors are responding with some fascinating answers, and complete Network cameras are now becoming available.

As advances in technology bring lower cost video imaging to the market, opportunities open up for deploying network cameras in areas never before dreamed of, with applications limited only by the imagination.

Viewing The World Today
Prior to widespread use of the Internet, remote viewing was far too expensive for all but the most critical applications.  Sophisticated equipment was difficult to install and maintain—analog video cameras, bulky coaxial cabling, plus lots of electronic equipment to support the cameras and prepare information for communication to a remote location.

Today almost everyone has a browser on their PC that enables viewing of many different types of graphic images, including motion video as well as still images.

However, image capture and transmission remains an expensive proposition because the interface to the rest of the world, i.e., the network, requires complex hardware and software capabilities in addition to the video camera.

What’s needed is inexpensive image capture equipment at remote sites.  Today, however, there are basically three approaches widely used today for transmitting video and still images over networks:

Standard video cameras with a PC
A standard analog video camera requires a video card in a PC (or a UNIX workstation) plus software for encoding/decoding images and controlling the network interface.  Additionally, the remote viewing end also needs a PC.  This type of camera is simply too expensive for most applications except surveillance and group video conferencing.

Stand-alone digital video cameras
Stand alone digital cameras capture and store images in memory for later transmission to a PC, which must compress the images before putting them out onto the network.  Images loaded into the PC can be manipulated and sent over the Internet, but of course this approach doesn’t allow for transmission of live images.

PC-dependent digital cameras
These so-called "webcams," tethered to a PC, can be relatively inexpensive, but require special software to capture, manipulate and transmit images.  Although useful for desktop conferencing and a variety of other general image applications, webcam digital cameras must be co-located with a PC.

None of these approaches has widespread appeal for network applications because of cost, inadequate functionality, inconvenient usage, or combinations of these limitations.  Fortunately new advances in technology are offering solutions much more suited to the nature of web usage today.

Network Cameras Establish a New Market Segment
Small, inexpensive, completely self-contained network cameras are about to hit the scene.  Incorporating everything necessary to capture live images and deliver them via the Internet to web browsers anywhere in the world, these new devices are poised to revolutionize streaming of video images over the Internet.

Combining sophisticated hardware and software into a tiny box that attaches directly to an Ethernet LAN or via a modem, the new web-imaging devices open up many new applications previously thought impossible—or at least too expensive for most wallets.

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