Technology leaps in video security are often fueled by developments adopted from large dollar markets like entertainment. The use of transcoding and format down sampling in the DynaView SOC Video Management System are good examples of this approach. This article offers a good discussion of the power and value of these techniques.
For live video streams used in security and surveillance applications on demand transcoding and format conversion offer substantial reductions in wide area network utilization while requiring practical levels of server and router power.
IPVideo Tech Blog 