touring

Hi all I have been using a generic Bt848 based 4 port DVR PCI card for several years, but have found that the image quality looks much the same whether I use a $25 camera from Ebay or a $200 1/3" name brand camera. After doing lots of searching on the forum I became aware of the concept of CIF/2CIF etc. I understand that many cards may record at a lower resolution and play back that same data "magnified" to a higher resolution. I then looked at a BT848 datasheet which seemed to say that the full PAL output resolution is either 720x576 or 768x576 depending on format. Can anyone tell me if this is true? I understand that using 4 cameras on a single card reduces the actual frame rate drastically, but wouldn't the resolution be unaffected? My software does produce video that appears to be 640x480, but resolution does appear rather poor. What is the maximum resolution one should expect from this sort of card? It's only for a home security system, so while I can drool at name brand cards mentioned on here, they are a bit beyond my budget..

Fair comment. But it does seem a little unlikely that Techwell designed a chipset for Ebay buyers lol I'd have thought that they made it into other vendors products too

Thanks Matt, useful answers. I am puzzled that noone has come across Techwell cards as they have been all over Ebay for a while. Obviously *someone* is buying them

Thanks JOINDVR I thought that is a good summary of things which need to be considered. There seems to be a huge emphasis on fps in advertised specs, but few mention the CIF recording resolution Just wish I could find out how the Techwell 6805 cards rate in that area...

Given the number of vendors trolling around on this forum, I'm surprised that noone can comment on Techwell chipset cards. Perhaps they aren't quite familiar with the finer details of their products

A Google search on the Geovision GV1240 produces this result: http://www.geovisiongv.com/GV1240.html The product specifications there state: "Geovision GV-1240 series card from Geovision offers several types of MPEG4 Hardware Compression as well as MPEG2 compression methods, Geovision Software also has H264 compression abilities" From your link to the MP4-16480 it seems that card also uses MPEG4 hardware compression. Without any more information, it's hardly surprising that they both produce similar results.

I'm curious what is the point of posting a picture of a camera without its specs?

Thanks Tom So it wouldn't make any difference whether I used the supplied Pico200 software or something like H264 WebCam which has been recommended elsewhere in the forum, the resolution on screen would be the same? Is anyone able to comment on the resolution of current cards based on the Techwell 6805 chipset? What is the recording resolution from them?

Thanks for the link, it was useful general information. But my question relates to a specific chipset, which I imagine many people on this forum would have used in the past. It's a bit surprising that noone seems able to answer the question. Perhaps they are all too busy making sales to other forum newcomers lol

I am not looking to buy anything at the moment. I was looking for answers to the questions I posted

I'm sorry I didn't understand the last post