Sony has formed a business partnership in visual security with US semiconductor manufacturer Intersil Corp. for worldwide development of a network camera capable of simultaneously transmitting both analog SD and digital HD images over a single coaxial cable.

Sony aims to introduce this new category of network camera - the 'Hybrid Camera' - to the market in the latter half of this fiscal year as part of its lineup of security cameras.

Since last year, Japan's domestic security camera market has been developing rapidly, with an influx of HD-resolution IP network cameras capable of transferring images over a LAN or over the Internet, supplying power to the camera and/or controlling it. Howevr, expensive facility-wide modifications spanning the entire interior of a building, including all cables, were required for such venues to introduce HD cameras to their systems.

Sony's new 'hybrid cameras' are the first in the industry to be equipped with IC chips that use Intersil's SLOC (Security Link over Coax) technology, thus eliminating any need for new cables to be laid or replaced within the building. This in turn enables the existing infrastructure environment of coaxial cables for analog SD cameras to be used "as is", thereby reducing installation costs and facilitating effective use of available cable resources from an environmental perspective.

Sony's IP network cameras are capable of image surveillance in high-resolution digital HD, and also offer graphics processing functionality, such as improved visibility of images with light/dark contrast through composition/auto-correction and motion detection.

These new 'hybrid cameras' make full use of the special characteristics of analog SD image signals, which boast virtually zero image transmission delay. The cameras can therefore continuously meet the needs of markets such as the financial market, in which systems must have the ability to conduct surveillance in real-time.