Hoof Hearted

Hi, I've got a 8 channel CCTV system based around a Killer XDH08 DVR. It's been working ok for several years now, but I want to upgrade. The reasons for upgrading are 1) I need a few more channels, and (2) I would like clearer quality on the recordings. Some of my cameras are the slim bullet type. So I think these will need replacing also in order to get better quality. For instance, it's not possible to read car number plates from my current system. I think i've accepted that I'm going to have to buy a 16 channel recorder, even though I can't imagine i'm ever going to use more than 11 channels. Since I bought my current system, a whole lot of DVR's have come on the market which are far cheaper than was available when I bought my current system. I don't mind paying extra though if I get a better system, so I would like to know how those cheaper systems stack up against a Samsung for instance? I found this unit which seems to be competitively priced. Is it any good? http://www.cctvshopper.co.uk/viewproduct.asp?pid=7113 I've been out of the loop for a long time. Which are the competent brands that people go for these days? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the replies. I'm probably going to be using 12v, but the good news is that there wont be any PTZ. So I can use 3 pairs for the power supply and one for the video. I looked at a couple of the cameras I am considering. They consume 1.8W which is 1.5A at 12v I'll take a look at those calculators. Thanks again Ian

Having successfully installed an 8 camera system at home, I'm looking at installing a CCTV System around the factory where I work. At home I used Cat5 cable to take the signal and power. But the longest cable run was only 20 metres. At work, some of the cable runs will be up to 60 metres. Am I likely to have problems with voltage drop over such a long cable run? Ian

I've had an email from the office manager in China. He made some enquiries and it turns out that the chinese government imposed a complete block on port 80 around the time we started having this problem. If it's only on port 80, that doesn't explain why we get the freezing on other ports. The office manager has made an application to get port 80 unblocked on our IP address. Ian

I dont have one of those myself, but one of the other UK guys has an Iphone. I'll ask if he can login using that.

Hi yes I am port forwarding UDP and TCP packets in the router. I think the router must be set correctly because the office manager can see continuous video in his home in the same chinese city. I got him to check again that it's ok today. The logs on the DVR seem quite basic and dont give me any information about networking issues. I tried that wireshark link you sent me, but it appears to be a dead link for me. Ian

It works perfectly on the local network and it works perfectly when the office manager logs in from his home.

I tried changing the DVR port to 143, but it told me I must use a port number greater than 2000. Can't imagine why that would be. The really strange thing about all this is that I no matter what permutation of ports I use, I always see 3 seconds of video before it freezes. I can select another camera subsequently and see another 3 seconds. Because I can repeatedly get 3 second bursts of video, i'm not so sure about it being blocked. The caching suggestion sounds more likely to me. To be clear about this, several of us have tried to access the DVR from within different environments in the UK. We all see exactly the same. We all log into a Server 2003 Terminal Server at the same site. That works fine. Plenty of bandwidth.

No that doesn't work. Let me explain..... As described previously http://my_ip = Page cannot be displayed. Port 80 has not been working at all for the past few weeks. It used to work initially though. I changed the port setting as you suggested but http://my_ip:5555 just gives 'Page cannot be displayed' Dont forget I mentioned previously that I connect using the http port listed on that configuration screen. The login screen has boxes for username, password and port number. My http port is currently 60081. So after changing the other port, the only way to login is by connecting with http://my_ip:60081 then on the login screen entering 5555 in the port number box. The video still freezes 3 seconds after I select a camera though. After it freezes I can still use the web interface for all other functions. Ian

If you read my original post, the 3 second problem only affects people logging in from the UK, from within China everything is ok. I just changed the 8000 port to 58000 and I changed the http port to 12345. Still got the freeze after 3 seconds viewing from the UK I'm connecting from my home pc which is not using a proxy server. Other people have tried connecting using different ISP and office networks. The 3 second freeze is absolutely consistent. Ian

In the configuration screeen, this DVR needs 2 ports need to be specified. I attached a screenshot to show this. The defaults are 80 and 8000. Both of these ports need to be opened in the router before the unit can be seen externally. The external login screen has boxes for username, password and port number. The port defaults to 8000. So it seems that it uses port 80 for http and 8000 for some other process. Like I said, port 80 no longer works. I redirected incoming traffic on a different port to go to the router on port 80. The video does work. But only for 3 seconds. If I select a different camera, that also works but only for 3 seconds. I created a new rule on the router directing incoming 5550 traffic to port 80 on the router. It made no difference. I can log in and browse around, but the video freezes 3 seconds after I select a camera to view.

Sorry this is going to be complicated. My UK customer asked me to go out to China and install a CCTV system in his factory there. I used a Samsung SHR-5160 DVR. I did a port forwarding rule on the router there so that web traffic on the default Port 80 is sent to the DVR. The DVR also uses port 8000. I did another rule on the router to send this traffic to the DVR. When I came back to the UK everything worked ok for a month, then we found that we could not log into the DVR remotely from the UK. However, the chinese office manager could see the video perfectly from his home in the same city. The chinese are famous for blocking various internet traffic (Great Firewall of China). I was immediately suspicious that they might have done something. So I did another rule and moved the http traffic onto another port on the router. This allowed us to log into the DVR again, but when we look at the video we only see 3 seconds of motion before it freezes. The same also happens on playback. I tried various ports and got the same behaviour each time. The office manager still sees everything working perfectly at his home. Has anyone got an idea of how I might fix this? Ian