GadgetFan

Hi, I am looking to put in a Video monitoring system for my home. I am new to this, so I am not sure what is possible or what the cost would be and I apologize if I leave out any critical info, but here goes. I had 4 locations on the exterior of my house prewired with cat 5, coax and low voltage that terminate in a A/V panel in a closet. I would like to have room in equipment to add 3 or 4 more cameras in the future. I made the wiring selection over a year ago and did the cat5 because I had heard about IP cameras and wanted to be able to use them if they were good cost/performance vs. traditional cameras. Below are my primary wants. 1) View live feed from any TV in the house 2) View live feed from the internet (password protected) by entering an IP address. 3) Record complete footage from all cameras in full quality. 4) Option to only record if movement in select pixels. 5) Ability to transfer all or select footage to DVD and removable hard drive. 6) Ability to record off site if an alarm trips for instance. 7) 30 f/s Recording capacity at full quality one week (As long as 5 is possible) I have been told that I need a multiplexer, DVR and IP video server. I am also looking for camera recommendations. The prewire was an upgrade that I paid (a lot) for with a "tract" builder. They did all of my network, coax and speaker wiring as well. I thought it would be less expensive and less mess to have them do it (the jury is still out). I asked the builder's contractor to recommend a system and they came up with Speco CVC 637EX for the cameras (said that IP cameras were more expensive also didn't seem to want to use IR cameras) and a Lorex L124A-81 4 Channel Multiplexer (need to get back with me on one with more channels). The contractor gets most of their work from captives like me, so I am not to sure if they know what they are doing when it comes to recommending equipment. From what I have read here, I am guessing that the Lorex stuff is pretty low end, not sure about the cameras. I am not married to any brand or platform. I want the best system for the money and I am willing to pay a little extra to get something that is a step above in quality, performance and ease of use. I know that is sort of vague, so I am willing to spend several thousand to get a good DVR/Multiplexer/IP video server plus the cost of the cameras. Please let me know what you think of the contractors recs and what you would choose instead. Also, If anyone works in Phoenix, I would be open to getting the equipment from you and having you install. Thanks for all of your help.

Rory, I am not looking to break the bank with this, but I appreciate tech equipment and am willing to pay a few extra bucks to get something with better picture quality, good networking, IP accesability, GUI etc. Is the Sanyo DSR-3009 a good choice? If one of the others is a better choice but more expensive I am certainly willing to pay for features, performance and reliability up to a point. If the Sanyo is X and the Panisonic is 2X I would be willing to pay if the difference if it is like comparing a tube TV to a LCD or Plasma. Same goes with the cameras, I would like the high res 480 tvl and with at least one camera, good IR to see with little or no ambient light. Later on, I plan to add more cameras. If I go with a PC based DVR is this reliable? I am sure that the features are great, but I want to set it and forget it. I am affraid that a PC will need babysitting. That is acceptable if you have a full time person montitoring your system in a large scale comercial application, but not in a home were you may be gone for weeks at a time. I know you know your stuff, so I appreciate your input. Thanks

Thanks for the input. Does that mean that the contractors recs were junk? Daryl what hook up would I need to view from any TV in the house. All TV's have at least 1 coax home run to ONQ distribution panel, so if necessary couldn't I use a modulator or something along those lines from an output on the DVR? And how do your DVR recs compare to Sanyo DSR-3009? smc, I am a little leary of a PC based system because of stability. It would need to be on all the time and I wouldn't want to have the system freeze when I am out of town. I use computers all of the time and even our servers at work need aps to be forced to quite every once in a while etc. Also noticed on the website that you recomended that they sell Nuvico, DM, Panasonic etc. Is the Panasonic worth twice as much as the others? What's the best of the rest? Thanks