A network video recorder is a device or software platform that receives, processes, and stores video footage from IP cameras across a network. It’s the modern counterpart to the digital video recorder (DVR) used in analog CCTV systems, with the key difference being that an NVR receives already-digitized video data rather than converting an analog signal.
Because processing happens at the camera rather than the recorder, NVR-based systems typically support higher resolution recording without a proportional increase in recorder-side processing load, along with easier scalability, since adding cameras is largely a matter of network capacity rather than new dedicated wiring.