SEANHAWG

That would be along the lines of a Chevy.

PTZ's for home use rock. You dont even have to get up to go see what your kids are doing outside, especially when you got your DVR connected to your TV. Simply switch your input to see your DVR, then control your PTZ with your DVR's remote control.

Did you port forward?

I have dealt with commercial grade DVR's that have come out of retail stores and consumer grade DVR's imported from China. I try to put myself in the shoes of a consumer when I am looking for something to sell. Sure there are differences in quality and userability between the 2 "grades" but that gap is starting to narrow as these inexpensive DVR's continue to increase in quality. Sure you are going to get a better DVR from a brand name pro-grade DVR, but then again, you are going to get a better car when you buy a Mercedes compared to a Ford. But most people will go for the Ford because it makes more economical sense for them and it "gets the job done" The only real price increase that I see that would be "worth it" are for DVR's that can record in D1 resolution at 30 FPS per channel but as previously discussed on most real world scenarios this is not needed. Specs like that are only needed for certain scenarios such as Casino's.

Is that at a custom setting? That seems pretty high, you may want to set it a little lower to see if you notice any difference to see if you can save on some hard-drive space. I dont notice too much of a difference between 2048 and the lower 1000's, but I am sure the differences are variable on certain DVR's. You may want to play with it to see what that "sweet spot" bit rate is on your DVR where you get at a certain level of Bit Rate and you dont see much of a difference whenever you increase it. Basically, you want to set it at the lowest you can get away with without sacrificing quality. What bit rate do you have your internet stream at?

Cool, right now he is using Gem Passives. I will take a look at their actives. Thanks.

Would I need active's on both ends? Is there a good one that you can recommend that you have worked with?

your image looks fine when plugged directly into the monitor which makes me think its a DVR issue. Try plugging the monoprice camera into the same port on the DVR that the q-see camera was plugged into.

I seen a pretty cool setup today that someone stuck a pinhole camera inside of a clock, it completely unnoticeable. You could come up with something like that. Just want to make sure to keep it protected from the weather.

your images didnt show up for some reason.

How long is the cable run? Did you check the voltage at the camera? Did you have to install a coupler to extend the cable run? When doing this, you increase the chance of having a bad video connection.

Yes on the other end of that cable that you cannot see in the picture is a BNC connection AND a power connection. 2 seperate cables. 2 of the pins have to do with video and the other 2 have to do with power

If its a vari-focal lens that I am dealing with, I will get it focused as I am bench testing it to the approximate distance that it will be viewing in on, then I will always fine focus the camera once I get it installed. This can sometimes be a pain in the butt to do with just one person as you will be having to run back and forth to look at the monitor to see what it looks like (unless of course you have a CCTV video tester) but I always have to re-focus mine once I install them. I just have a feeling that there is something else at play here. I know that Bosch 5-50mm lenses arent cheaply made and you should definetely be getting a nice sharp picture with it. I am not convinced that its your lens but I could be wrong.

Is this a board camera?

I didnt think that the second picture that you posted was that bad, it doesnt look like you have very far to go. To me, it looks focused, but just not sharp. Was that picture taken over the network? if so that could also be the problem of a little fuzziness of the picture. I would bet that it would look sharper on the local monitor given that it was a small tube TV. Was that picture set at max sharpness? Also, I want to make sure that you are focusing the camera at the location that the camera will be in, instead of focusing at your work bench and then setting the camera outside.

I believe that 4 pin connection that you have the closeup on is the one that a little connector connects to and it has a video and power cable attached to it and on the other end is a BNC connector and power plug. You may be able to contact the manufacturer to see if you can get that wire. Or, if you want to do it the redneck way, you can find out the pin assignment for each pin and solder some wires to it and somehow make the wires stay connected. Here is what one of those connectors looks like connected to one of our Wren board cameras: I havent been able to find these on sale anywhere so if anyone knows, please let me know.

I would stick with the standard cameras that have seperate power and video feed. There are a few ways you can run video and power to your camera. You can use what is known as Siamese Cable which has the Coax cable and Power Wires attached to each other which makes installation an ease instead of using seperate coax and seperate power wires. Another option is to use Cat5 cable with the use of Video Baluns. You can run video and power over one Cat5 cable, but you can sometimes run into problems running power over Cat5 on long cable runs. The Video Baluns are connected near the camera and it is what is used to connect the Cat5 cable to your power and video connections on you camera. Whichever you decide to do is up to you. Being a newbie, it would probably easier for you to use Siamese Cable, but dont think that that is an inferior choice as there are plenty of professionals who use siamese cable today. Its just whatever you prefer.

If the silver ring is on, try taking it off as it may be preventing the lens from getting close enough to the CCD sensor, causing the blurry image. The lens that you have is a CS-mount lens and the silver ring that is on the camera could possibly be a C-mount adapter. Try taking the silver ring off to see if you have better results.

Sounds like a peculiar problem, you should definetely be able to get a nice sharp picture pretty easily which makes me think there is still some kind of problem causing the cam to be out of focus. 1) Did you test your camera on a Tube TV or LCD? For the most part, you will get a sharper picture on a tube. 2) Is the lens screwed on completely all the way? 3) That camera looks like a 1/2" CCD, are you using a 1/2" lens and not a different sized lens with an adapter? 4) When you say it doesnt look like some of the pictures on here, I just want to make sure you arent comparing it to megapixel images. Also, alot of the images on here are squeezed down from there original size which makes the pixels more condensed which results in a better image than it would up on a big monitor, but still it shouldnt be too much different 5) Whenever you bench tested it, did you get any focal points to appear sharp at all? Or was it just the particular focal point that you were trying to get that was not appearing sharp

Yes I find that Bit Rate is just as important as pixel count, case in point, we had a DVR come in which could record in D1 resolution but the bit rate was set so low that it looked awful on playback, just real blocky looking. We had another DVR that I would have rather used that recorded in CIF but it could be set at a higher bit rate. I dont know why some of these DVR manufacturers do now allow high bit rates, even on the highest setting, it doesnt seem to go past 600 kbps sometimes. It seems like it would be an easy thing to do to up the bitrate some more, even on the cheapo DVR's, but I dont really know much about manufacturing. Now when we are scoping out DVR's, we always ask what the Bit rate settings can be set at.

Try hooking it up to a TV, perhaps its just configured for the BNC video out right now. Also, if that doesnt work, take out the hard-drive and see what it does whenever you attempt to boot it up.

is 4 channel playback pretty common among the 8 & 16 channel DVR's

Does this DVR have customized bit rate? I find that alot of the budget DVR's have a low bit rate, even on the highest setting which results in a very "blocky" looking image on playback.

I'm a big believer in sacrificing frame rate in order to get better quality.

I always thought that 123 and surveillanve-video were the same company, now I know. I dont think you should be too nervous. I have ordered from them a couple of times. From what I hear, they sell on price only and you wont receive any service after the sell but if you are okay with that then go for it. I ordered a mount and they sent me a different type, it was actually a better one but I emailed them and never got a response, I never tried to call them because I was fine with the better mount they gave me.