Instead it’s probably fair to say that Sanyo was overwhelmed by a flood of commodity-priced cameras coming out of China and Korea at the exact moment its designers were working to lever the company’s hardware out of the 520-line rut in which they found themselves stuck.

If you’re wondering whether Sanyo found its way out of that rut, the answer is a resounding yes. The HD images dished up by the new VCC-HD4000-P make the scenes delivered by 520 or 540-line analog cameras look decidedly inferior.

We’ve observed before in SE&N that in a market driven by price, nothing drives sales like technology innovation and in an ocean of “me too” video surveillance cameras, you have to admire this effort from Sanyo’s R&D team. They’re among the first of the traditional analog camera manufacturers to bring the market a serious IP camera and there’s no doubt it’s among the best IP cameras out there.

Before we go further, let’s look at HD technology itself. The importance of HD resolution is that HD viewed on a composite monitor is much superior to even the best analog video surveillance cameras. What this means is that HD IP cameras really are worth the investment – they’re better in almost every way.

One of the nicest things about the VCC-HD4000P is the fact it comes with a 4-megapixel lens that not only saves installers money, it saves them and their customers from paying for souped-up surveillance cameras installed with rubbish lenses that never perform to spec.

In terms of specifications, Sanyo’s new baby comes with a progressive scan CMOS sensor, dual codec’s in order to deliver 1080p at 25ips using H.264, as well as 2288 x 1712 performance in JPEG.

The VCC-HD4000P’s dual codec’s allow dual streaming of H.264 and JPEG, enabling simultaneous high definition recording and real time H.264 live monitoring across a network. An HDMI output allows the full quality of the camera’s images to be observed on an HD monitor and there is an option to display the video onto an analogue monitor at a huge 680 TV lines.

Sanyo’s VCC-HD4000P has a peak resolution of 2288 x 1712 pixels for outstanding local monitoring (if your monitor can handle it). The camera has 4 operating modes, the first 2 are HD, one being H.264 and JPEG, with the other being H.264 only. Meanwhile modes 3 and 4 are Standard H.264 and JPEG, and JPEG only.

Modes 1 and 2 have aspect ratios of 16:9, and resolutions of 1920 x 1080, 1280 x 720, 1024 x 576, 960 x 540, 640 x 360 and 320 x 180. Meanwhile modes 3 and 4 with their aspect ratios of 4:3 offer resolutions of 2288 x1712, 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 1080 x 864, 1024 x 768, 800 x 600, 720 x 576, 640 x 480, 360 x 288 and 320 x 240.

Other features of the camera include 2 alarm inputs, 10x digital zoom, day/night operation, anti-smearing, face recognition, BLC, AGC, SD card slot, USB output, and 5 privacy masks. How’s day/night performance? Independent tests we’ve read suggest this new Sanyo camera delivers low light performance that’s as good as any other IP camera available and better than most.

Now, one of the sweet things about full digital cameras is the sorts of mainstream smarts CCTV solutions can now offer – including things like human face detection we glanced off a moment ago. You don’t need it all the time but in some applications face detection is an excellent option.

When it’s activated, the VCC-HD4000P automatically detects human faces and deploys things like auto-focus and backlight compensation in order to get the best view of the face/s in question including groups of 32. This is useful if the camera’s job is to get identifiable footage of all faces passing a camera.

The camera can be integrated into a broader solution but it’s more than clever enough to function stand alone in retail or domestic applications. The VCC-HD4000P is delivered with VA-SW3050Lite viewer software that’s capable of supporting live viewing of image streams and recordings. You can also buy network recording software which is an application program able to extend he network operation of the camera.

This system allows monitoring of images multiple cameras on a split screen while monitoring and managing up to 128 cameras over a network. You also get automatic transmission/email of images upon alarm, pre and post alarm recording, Power-over-Ethernet support, multi-casting, onboard backup, internal log files and SSL compatibility (with JPEG).