DVRs for Cop Cars

AEton writes "News.com is reporting that IBM is developing digital video recorders for cop cars. The systems involve a digital video camera and reusable hard drives which police officers will take with them on their shifts; centralized servers with up to 3.5 TB of storage will hold recordings. The cameras continuously record and cache old video in a "Tivo-like" fashion; tapes will start from three to five minutes before the cop turned on the recorder. Unbiased, high-quality recording could have a compelling social effect; and at the very least, we're headed for HDTV Cops."

Comments

Re:Einstein would be impressed.

[Aviancer]

An interesting concept, but no.. what they're pointing out is that the video would be run ALL THE TIME, and discarded after 5 minutes. When the cop presses "record" the machine would save the video from 5 minutes before the record button was pressed in addition to all the current video until the "stop recording" command is sent.

Already on Motorcycles

[theonetruekeebler]

A motorcycle is a rather space-constrained and high-vibration environment, and a conventional tape-based system simply wouldn't cut it. A company here in Wheat Ridge, CO has done several installations for the Colorado State Patrol's Harleys. They also borrowed a BMW R1150RTP from us and did a demo installation on it.

The system works just as described: The system is always recording to a programmable-length buffer; once the officer cuts his disco lights on, the buffer becomes a permanent file and current events are appended to it.

I didn't ask any questions about how easy it was to erase files off the system, but I remember seeing a keypad on the unit and the guy I brought the bike to did enter a code before he got into any of the menus. It would be easy enough give those codes to the station chiefs, but not the patrol officers.