I have an old black and white ccd style camera with a 240v IR lamp below which has failed! the camera is still fine in the day but obv nothing can be seen at night. my question, replace the IR lamp for another which is costly?? or replace whole camera for an IR camera, if soo any suggestions? was thinking of maybe a night devil camera!

imo any camera that has built in illumination is usually carp. They can be used but with caution etc.

If you camera is old then a built in IR cam will have benefits but the best way is a good camera with seperate emitter.

What sort of distance are you looking? As james say's usually the cameras with built in IR is not as good as a seperate IR, you can expect to get a torch style light emitted from most, rather than a flood style that you would normally get from a seperate lamp (Though I have seen some pretty poor seperate lamps too in my time)

Oh and swerve the night devil type cameras they just slow the shutter down, this causes blurry intruder images