SEANHAWG

And I would bet that the most common misconception to a broken DVR is that the Hard-Drive went bad. So if anyone has a DVR that you think that has went Kaput, try changing the hard-drive and see what that does. I have gotten some great deals on some brand name DVR's off of ebay that were listed as "for parts or not working" in which the user mistakenly thought that the DVR went bad, and all it was was a bad hard-drive. Changed out the hard-drive and it was as good as new.

I've never tried, but I bet that cheap flimsy pre-made cable wont last very long at all outdoors. There usually isnt enough insulation to seem that it would last.

A decent one should last a long while. Its the hard-drives that you may have to change.

I sold it a while back. I didnt want to spend $200-300+ on a converter for a camera I paid $35 for. Thanks for all the suggestions though.

I just got a hold of a Panasonic Super Dynamic PTZ WV-CS654. I just went on a massive Google quest to find the manual without any luck. Supposedly you can control the PTZ over the Coax cable. This is new to me. My question is, is there an adapter that I can get to plug into my regular RS-485 inputs on my DVR to control this thing? And then after that I gotta figure out which protocol and baud rate these work on but first I wanted to see if there is some kind of adapter I can use to make this work.

Sorry you couldnt reach me. I am not in the office on the weekends but you can email me as I am always checking my email. If the clover DVR works for you then stick with it. That is if you are satisfied with the cameras. I am sure the Q-see isnt too much different. 3.6mm wont work in all scenarios, it may be fine for some typical room settings or short range outdoor shots but I prefer vari-focal lenses on cameras because it helps you zoom in and out for various applications. With the 3.6mm lens, you are stuck with that. Its also odd that its 3.6mm, but it has a vary narrow field of view as you said. I would figure with a 3.6mm lens, it would have somewhat of a wide view. Lens strength is one of the most important aspects of a camera. But this is my point on the packaged systems, the DVR's are sometimes okay but the cameras are usually not any good. If you are wanting to go budget, and you want decent quality, my suggestions is to buy a budget DVR and perhaps get some better cameras. An installer on another thread mentioned that he used a $99 Q-see and gave a decent review of it and said that it had good recording quality. Perhaps you can PM him to see where his client bought it. I also sent you a PM.

Sounds like a bargain. I'd be interested in seeing some screenshots too.

@ Toaster We have had a couple of Clover DVR's come through our warehouse. 1 was horrendous and the other one was actually pretty nice. The Clover that was horrendous was one that came in a package deal with cameras, it was a 2005 package so perhaps they have some better ones now. If I were to pick, I would stay with the clover system since it has the ability to record at D1 on all channels. Even though it does it at 8 FPS, thats not that bad really and should work fine for your scenario. One thing I have noticed with these package deals is the cameras that come in them are not that great, but the DVR's are decent. The cameras seem to have very weak optics for the most part. You could always upgrade your cameras in the future if you wanted to.

I have never used either one so I cant attest to how good or bad they are but 8 fps for D1 is not bad.

trying to get a 30 fps "per channel" dvr @ d1 will cost you 3 or 4 times as much (or more) as those that you are looking at. The cost benefit analysis doesnt work out in that scenario.

Megapixel cameras are the way to go if you want to catch detail from a wide view. However you can still pick up some detail using Analog cameras. You may just need a stronger lens. Of course the more you zoom in a lens, the field of view becomes narrower. But from what I have noticed, people put alot of thought into the cameras they purchase by purchasing super high rez, but they dont put alot of thought into lens strength, which could be crucial to picking up details. The biggest request that we get is "I wanna see a license plate". Well it will be tough to capture a license plate that is 100' away with a typical 4-9mm lens or therabouts. And I see alot of people trying to do just that. With Analog, its just hard to get a one size fits all camera no matter how good the resolution is. Sometimes its just advantageous to have 2 or more cameras set up for a scenario, one for a wide view, and one zoomed in on a particular area such as an exit to capture details such as license plates. From what I have seen, its still cheaper, when all costs are considered, to get 2 or 3 good analog cameras, compared to one good name brand megapixel camera. I am sure I will get some disagreements but thats just what I have seen. I am sure, in a couple of years, that will not be the case anymore.

Its probably the ghetto Q-see cable. I have never seen their cable but I assume they use the cheapest material possible in order to keep the costs down. I would recommend getting some regular RG59 Siamese Cable, not the premade stuff. For the most part, the premade stuff is low quality.

I ran across this on the Government Liquidation Site today: http://www.unclesamsretailoutlet.com/product.php?productid=151&cat=263&page=1

That would be a great idea. Perhaps we could make it a sticky post and have it updated frequently as info is gathered.

It sounds like a cool idea. My initial thought was that viewing the video that close to your eyeballs will give you a headache. They may make those glasses where they are not so bad but I would make sure before you spend that much on the glasses. Also, I couldnt see where that helmet camera has an IR filter or not. My bet is that it probably has an IR filter which means you would not be able to see infrared with it.

great to hear.

Did it come with a warranty? I would send it back and ask for a replacement if so. To be honest, it sounds defective.

I betcha he knows its a fake, otherwise, if he knew it was real, he would have put "geovision" in the title. That would have been a good selling point. Instead, he put it in the description to avoid his card showing up in search results when somebody searches Geovision. If Geovision is like most other companies that have several counterfeit products, they will search ebay for fake cards and report them to ebay to have the listing pulled down.

y'all need to go to your local network where your DVR is at and get on a computer there and visit the website: www.canyouseemee.org It will automatically show your wan IP. You then need to type in all of your ports being used for your DVR to see if they are open. Another great tool is: http://www.grc.com/default.htm Scroll down to visit "shields Up" Follow through to the page where you can click "All Service Ports" This will show the status of all the ports from 1-1056

When you test all of your cameras are you using the same everything: 1. Same Cable 2. Same channel input on your DVR 3. Same Power supply test your good cameras with the same equipment as above too. Its obvious that your cameras are good since you got a good picture when plugging them in the monitor, so you have to use the process of elimination to determine what the root of the problem is.

Never worked with their Pixim cameras but we buy and sell several of their commercial grade board cameras with domes and I like them as well as my customers. Also dealt with their power supplies and some of their monitors. Let me know if you use the Pixim's. I would be interested in seeing how they are.

It looks like it takes a standard SATA hard-drive. You can find them everywhere. Seagate is a good brand Hard-Drive to get as well as Western Digital. Just make sure it can take 1 TB. Some DVR's have limitations to how much storage they can accept.

Sweet. And that will work with a 24 VAC power supply at a straight shot of 8-900M? Which model do you use?

Did you set the alien to its highest quality compression settings when recording? That can significantly increase or decrease the quality sometimes. Just because you had it in D1 doesnt mean it is going to look top notch if its set at a real low compression quality. Blockiness is a sign of highly compressed video. I dont see why the installer would set it at low compression quality, so it may be a piece of junk after all. I'm glad the Samsung is working out for you though. I've never met a Samsung I didnt like.

Sounds odd. Try rebooting. And Try doing a factory default reset of the DVR to see if that helps. Make sure the factory reset doesnt erase your hard-drive, pretty sure it wont but you'll want to make sure.