CCTV Camera Max Cable Length Guide Leave a comment

The length of the cables run is very important for CCTV cameras. The maximum length for the video cable when running CCTV cameras is important to consider. This blog will cover the different kinds of cables that fit the bill and that are used in different scenarios.

RG59 Coax Cable

This is by far the most popular type of cable used for analog CCTV camera installations. Despite its massive popularity, there are other options that are probably equally as good. Another good option is thicker gauge RG-6. What other benefits does it provide? The fact that it carries the signal a few hundred feet more than RG59 cables do. It is definitely worth mentioning that not all kinds of RG59 cables are good to be used for CCTV camera installation. Some are definitely better than others. How to identify which RG59 cables are the best? The RG59 cables that use a clad center conductor which is copper coated steel and has an aluminum shield is the best type of RG59 cable to use.

UTP Cable

Sometimes, instead of using a coaxial cable some people use UTP cables. The advantage of using CAT-5 cables is that the video baluns allow the cables to run longer. Sometimes when the baluns are powered or active, this is especially useful. Is that the only way to run the cables longer? Well, no. Another possible option to do the same thing would be using CCTV video amplifiers and adjusting them so that you can use your RG59 coax cable with it. CAT-5 with active video baluns usually run around 5000 feet whereas the ones with passive video balun run for around 1200 feet.

HD CCTV

What special features do these kinds of cables provide? HD over coax security cameras use the same RG59 Siamese cable as analog CCTV cameras. However, they support a higher resolution of 1080p and can even go beyond if necessary. 720p and 1080p high definition AHD cameras are readily available for sale. The maximum distance for RG59 coax cable is 100 feet. What do you do if you want to extend the range? You can add a HD video amplifier that is 2600 feet. What that does is that it allows you to use multiple amplifiers to stretch it over 5000 feet.

The way this interacts with HD-TVI cameras is a bit different. HD-TVI cameras support 1080p resolution as well. These kinds of cameras are hard-wired to use coax cables such as RG59. But do they run as far as the other cables? In fact, these can run further than AHD cameras with RG59 coax cable. If a RG59 coax cable was used, the max distance becomes 1640 feet. If an HD-TVI video amplifier is used, it can run up to 2000 feet. Multiple amps can be added to extend that over 4000 feet.

There is, however, a variance, that can be noticed with HD-CVI cameras. You might be wondering how the variance occurs since they use the same RG59 cable. The distance is the same here as well as the cables go as far as up to 1000 feet. If a video amplifier is used, the distance will be 2600 feet and multiple amps can be used to extend that to over 5000 feet. The final type of camera that use this technology is HD-SDI cameras. This video standard is very old and you may very well be familiar with it. It supports 720p/1080p and as a result, the cable lengths should be kept short. The kinds of cable used are RG59 or RG6 cable. These cameras, however, do not support CAT-5 and video baluns.