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Genie protects art treasures

Stockport Art Gallery, home to one of the north of England's most eclectic collections of paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture, has updated its security protection with the installation of new digital equipment from Genie CCTV.

The magnificent neo-classical Art Gallery - part of Stockport Council - boasts three exhibition spaces made up of the main, west and east galleries.  The small permanent collection consists of approximately 50 paintings including examples by the celebrated local artist LS Lowry, as well as paintings and sculptures from the late Victorian and early 20^th century era.  Other collections include contributions from artists living in the North of England as well a changing contemporary exhibitions programme of local and regional significance.

Due to the importance of a number of works within the collection, the need for an up to date protection system was deemed essential.  After extensive research by the Gallery's and the Council's Security Services, the contract was awarded to Genie's local distributor; Wigan based Fire Sound and Security.

The system installed comprises a single LG LDV-S154 Triplex 16-channel digital DVR with internal Multi Standard DVD re-writer and 10 Genie VRCD 5351 digital noise reduction (DNR) technology vandal resistant dome day/night colour cameras.

The LG LDV-S154C DVR is suitable for a wide range of applications including remote site viewing.  It excels as a replacement for time-lapse and real time VCR's/Multiplexer combinations, providing a high rate of recording at 720 x 288 resolution, using Wavelet video compression.  It can be fitted with up to three internal hard drives, giving storage of up to 1.2 terabytes, and additional storage can be achieved with a variety of backup devices including remote HDD's, JBOD and RAID (up to 60TB) using the S154's USB and IEE1394 Fire Wire connections.  Its ‘Panoramic Playback' feature also enables the unit to show every image recorded in a 4x4 montage so that no evidence is missed.

The high performance Genie VRCD 5351 digital noise reduction (DNR) technology vandal resistant dome day/night colour cameras dramatically improve picture quality at low light levels.  Since low light levels can introduce both random and fixed noise onto video images, the cameras incorporate Genie's innovative digital noise reduction (DNR) technology - available in four levels - to significantly reduce this noise and produce a high signal to noise ratio and prevent ghost effects.  As a result, enhanced levels of identification are possible in low light and, in addition, recorded file sizes are reduced by 40% when using JPEG compression and a massive 70% when using MPEG compression.

Simon Green, Genie CCTV's National Sales Manager, says: ‘When Stockport Council agreed to upgrade security at the Art Gallery, they wanted a system that incorporated the latest technology in a value for money package.  We were able to deliver a state-of-the-art system that met all their requirements and this was installed by the Council's Security Services.  The cameras are now in use 24 hours a day for security surveillance."