CollinR

It's most likely somewhat no problem and somewhat your DVR. Whats the native resolution for your LCD? (probably 1024*768 or more) The one for your TV is probably somewhere between 600*350 and 700*500. If that was a new badboy HiDef say 1366*768 TV it would look about equally crappy. If your DVR supported 640*480 recording it would help some but 480 lines blown up to 800 still doesn't look so great. Also it can use crappy or over compression further enlarging the problem. This is basically like putting a postage stamp in a xerox machine and enlarging it 200%. It doesn't look the same after you blow it up that far. How far from the TV were you? Match that with the LCD. Most are confortable sitting 10-15" from their computer monitors but their TVs they are usually feet away.

I found it. It's in the SDK area. http://www.video-insight.com/Products/SDK.aspx Bottom of the page. Thats a really coopl feature if it works that way.

No joke, I was ~considering~ calling him out on that.

I think I read something on your website about being able to map cameras to ports on the server. Is that accurate? ie http://serverip:1 = camera1 http://serverip:2 = camera2

~400 Line cameras look good on ~400 line TVs, not so good on ~800 line computer monitors.

Thats blows... I just recently did a school with a tornado room, 18" reinforced concrete.

I'm going to bring this thread up every time rory says IP cams need a 24/7 IT department. All good points, especially on the support and parts. Also if you have a DSP out to a monitor you'll know pretty quickly if you have trouble.

Following the manual (hope it's in English! ) is the best plan.

I can't find much on that specific converter but others can do the following. Try putting all of the "+" together and all of the "-" together, PTZs don't usually feddabck their position so you shouldn't have data crashes.

Can you get a make/model of the 232>485 converter? You have a RS485 4 wire unit and you need a 2 wire. Many 4 wire units have a dip switch or jumper to put them into 2 wire mode. If you don't flip the switch it'll never work.

Making the CD VCD or SVCD so it will play on normal courtroom DVD players is yet another.

I never suggest people use ATI display adapters with Nvidia northbridges, actually I'm suprised it ever works at all but I know it usually does. Oh yeah I'm biased, I HATE ati.

Excellent photo comparison! So what about your opinion?

The cards that use bt878 chips can do 30fps 740x480 PER CHIP. The GV250 must be slowed in software. This could also be effected by transcoding if you select a compression greater then MPEG2. Multiplexing effects this too, unfortunately I don't know exactly how much but IIRC it's 2 fps per switch. So a GV 600 - 4 should be able to get 6 fps ( (30-8)/4=5.5fps ) assuming all 4 channels are active. My problem is GV stops using the bt878 somewhere in the 800 range, once they gop to techwill I don't know jack.

The RG59 copper braid and pin. RG59 is only really good for video, no power, no data. RG59 only supports 1 camera per cable. 1 Cat5 cable has 8 22 or 24 gauge wires inside twisted into pairs, and many many wiring methods. (24 gauge is far more common) You can run 4 cameras video alone down 1 Cat5 cable. You can run 2 PTZs video and data down 1 Cat5 cable. You can run 1 IP based camera, or 1 ethernet switch for many cameras from a single cat5 cable. The 16/4 is for power. It is 4, 16 gauge conductors in a jacket. It will carry camera power for long distances or provide for higher drawing devices. Basically if you bury one of those composite cables you are set for a long time analog, IP, multiple cameras, 12 or 24 volt. You are set. I don't have any links I can post but google is your friend. So you want a composite cable consisting of: 1-RG59u 1-Cat5e 1-16/4 The video however will not signifcantly improve assuming you terminated your RG59 properly. This a DIY deal? If so figure out about how many feet you need and I might be able to help you out with the cable. You will quickly realize composite cabling costs $, especially if you have to buy 500' or 1000' when you only need 40'.

Thats probably what I would do, then you can use analog or IP cameras in the future. This is also called composite cable, and you can get a number of configurations. For your analog needs you'll want RG59 copper coax and not the RG6 aluminum you often find for home structured wiring. The one WirelessEye is probably talking about is 1 RG59, 1 Cat5e and 1 16/4.

What I really meant by that was if you hook a top of the line hi res camera directly to it the result will be better quality then most if not all CCTV DVRs. It will not improve the quality at all but it won't degrade it as much as many other methods.

Plextor makes a hardware encoder that you might check into. http://www.plextor.com/english/products/ConvertX2.htm It's a USB device that you can use with most any laptop, all you need to do is get their system to playback on a TV or CCTV monitor and T into the feed (or just swap the wires). It will exceed the quality of all CCTV recordings I have seen aside from megapixel IP stuff. You might also call some of your local CCTV installers, I will trade services like that for referals or leads to who has a junk system and keeps getting knocked over. You might be surprised at how willing a pro may be to help ya.

I would at least look at some.

Right you were asking about glowing LEDs, thats actually a good thing in this case. With invisable IR light you will have no blink reflex you'll go snow blind before you realize you are having a problem. But you can use a night light (christmas lights on ceiling???) and a low light CCTV camera, you can run it directly to your TV or your modulator just a BNC>RCA adapter.

You are spot on on the cooling and power consumption fronts but the speed has me somewhat. Also reliablity apears to not be a factor??? Of the "fast" drives you really can't get one much bigger then 150-200gb without spending lots of $. As disk capacity increases it's reliablity decreases somewhat, almost all HDs are all still mechanical thats just the way it is. This is partially why the really fast drives barely break 300gb, if you have a RAID array you will have multiple disks anyway for redundency Is noise level a concern? 15k RPM drives make some. Speed costs. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822111152 Whatcha gunna do with it?

That thing still has pretty good picture while submerged.

It's my understanding that the serial data will go about twice as far as the video signal (passive balun, no trancievers), but thats in the cat5 with the video. I have installed 4 PTZs on 2 cat5s first one maybe 350' out with a splice in it about half way, second one ~350 feet out without a splice. The other run started about ~450' out with a splice in the last 60' then the last one ~600' no splices. Each cam got a home run of 18/2 for power (4). So far no problems and way cheaper the siamese plus UTP data.

Okay now I see better, I know jack about dedicated units. If you only care about remote then forget a keyboard and save some dough. If you Run 2 cables 1 cat5 and 1 18/2 You can run a camera, microphone, or even PTZ serial data on any of the pairs so you can really have 2 PTZs video and data down 1 cat5. There wouldn't be any gain from running 2 cat5 cables to the PTZ.

Just about everything can run Pelco. Can you not use the DVR software to control the PTZ? If not you can get into command issues without a multiplexor. You shouldn't have any problems, might even try passive baluns before throwing $ at it. I personally use the blue pairs for video and orange for data. Use 18/2 for power, most PTZs are 24VAC, I only use cat5 for power with bullets/mini domes.