Troubleshooting
The picture quality is poor
Poor picture is usually a settings or placement problem rather than a camera fault. Check whether you are viewing the low-resolution substream, whether the camera is fighting backlight from a doorway, and whether the recorder's bitrate has been set low to save storage.
You may be watching the substream
Remote viewing defaults to a low-resolution stream to save bandwidth. The recorded footage is often much better than what the phone shows.
Backlight
A camera pointed at a bright doorway records silhouettes. Moving it off-axis, or enabling wide dynamic range, fixes what looks like a camera fault.
Bitrate set too low
Lowering the bitrate stretches storage and destroys detail in movement. If someone extended your retention without a bigger drive, this is usually how.
Why is my CCTV picture quality so bad?
Is the recorded footage better than the live view on my phone?
Usually yes, noticeably. Check playback on the recorder itself before concluding the cameras are poor — the difference surprises most people.
Will a higher-resolution camera fix it?
Only if resolution is genuinely the limit. Backlight, dirty lenses and low bitrate all produce bad pictures that no camera upgrade will solve.
Need this doing?
Security camera repair covers cameras showing no image, recorders that stopped recording, footage you cannot retrieve, and systems that lost remote viewing. Most faults are power, cable or configuration rather than a failed camera. Diagnosis is free, and we quote a fixed price before doing any work.
Security camera repair — what it costsRelated pages
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