Resi video on the rise? Some say yes, and maybe that's a good a thing.

So I got my SIA Update email this morning and I have to say, I'm liking the work SIA's doing here. There's no reporting like what we do at SSN, but they're doing a really nice job of tracking important issues and trends and blasting them out in a daily email.

Anyway, today I noticed a particular entry on resi video monitoring. According to this story, residential video is on the rise. I've been writing about video—traditionally used more commonly in commercial and municipal applications—for quite a while, and it looks like video may be crossing over more into the resi market. I wrote a story recently about video, security and access control converging in a residential high-rise application that may just be evidence of a new trend. The story from the SIA email notes that the technology is accessable and the price points are coming down. Video pricepoints have been coming down according to many I've spoken with. My fearless editor Martha also recently blogged down in Charlotte at ESX that some security folks were forecasting a sizeable uptick in resi video over the coming years.

What have you noticed out there, avid readers? Are you installing or monitoring more residential video? I'm curious.

Of course, something to which I've paid a lot of journalistic attention is the ongoing movement of municipalities advocating a priority response for verified—either via video, audio, or dual zone, or eyewitness verification—alarms. Why, just recently at the ESX show in Charlotte, N.C. I sat down briefly with RSI Video Technologies' Keith Jentoft and Major Eddie Levins of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD. Levins affirmed that if there's event based video tied to an alarm, police respond faster… It just makes sense.

"We're much more excited about the captures and arrests than we do about going up to the same places and rattling the doors," Levins told me. "We get a lot of repeat offenders, too, so when we get the chance to actually apprehend these guys, it reduces our overall workload. We respond better when there's better information. Our policy's so strong now, that even with alarms that we've cut off due to excessive false alarms, when there's better information like video, we respond. A crime in progress, no matter where it is trumps everything."

They told me that the CMPD has an official policy to upgrade a situation in which video surveillance is a factor. Dispatchers in the municipality are advised to enter any calls where the alarm monitoring company has actual live streaming video of subjects in the premise or on the perimeter as a breaking and entering call to residence or business.

I'm interested to keep my eye on this and see whether video becomes a normal part of residential systems.