13 Feb 2009

 Marriott Hotel, London
 London Marriott Hotel deploys IndigoVision's complete IP video system
IndigoVision's complete IP Video system has been installed at the prestigious London Marriott Hotel in Kensington, as part of a CCTV security upgrade.

The 7 storey, 216 room hotel wanted to upgrade its surveillance capability with the very best available technology, to meet the ever increasing security demands of a central London hotel. By deploying the IndigoVision solution, the hotel re-used its existing analogue CCTV infrastructure whilst at the same time adding advanced features and superior image quality that was not available from the original system. IndigoVision's approved partner Astro Communications installed the CCTV upgrade.

The security threats facing a city centre hotel are significant, not only does a surveillance system have to aid guest and staff safety but also has to monitor the security issues around high-profile guests and specific incidents such as walk-in-theft. It is therefore, vitally important to have a flexible surveillance solution that provides the very best image quality and analysis tools.

"The IndigoVision system provides us with an excellent tool for monitoring the security of the hotel," said Jim Fraser, Marriott Hotel Chief Engineer. "The video quality is superb and the facilities of the video management software are far superior to what was achievable with the old CCTV system."

‘Control Center', IndigoVision's IP Video and alarm management software is used by the security operators to view live and recorded video from all of the cameras in and around the hotel. A single PC running ‘Control Center' software replaced all of the original analogue control room equipment and at the same time provided a suite of tools for viewing and analysing the video. Over 30 days of video recording is achieved using IndigoVision's standalone rugged Network Video Recorders (NVRs), providing a fault-tolerant recording solution.

 "The IndigoVision system provides us with an excellent tool for monitoring the security of the hotel," said Jim Fraser, Marriott Hotel Chief Engineer.

"The analysis tools allow us to quickly identify recorded footage of an incident, even well after the fact," added Jim Fraser. "Following a recent hit-and-run incident on one of our driveways, we were able to quickly identify the relevant footage and export evidential quality video for the Police."

This project demonstrates how the benefits of an IndigoVision IP Video solution can be achieved without the need to replace much of the original investment in the existing analogue CCTV. The migration from analogue to digital can be achieved seamlessly, with little or no surveillance downtime. Astro Communications reused all of the original cameras and coax cable infrastructure for the Marriott hotel project. The original hardware switching matrix was replaced with IndigoVision's 8000 transmitter/receiver modules that convert the analogue camera feeds into DVD quality MPEG-4 digital video for transmission over a local IP network, to which the ‘Control Center' workstation and NVRs are also connected. The combination of ‘Control Center' and the IP network creates a ‘virtual matrix', that provides far more flexibility and scalability than a traditional hardware matrix.