danweber

I was wondering about the same thing. I have used Geovision in the past and it worked fine. Looking at the GeoVision 1120 and the Avermedia NV5000 there is quite a price difference and I am wondering if this difference is justified. It seems that GeoVision has more advanced features but for the standard "stuff" they both seem to compare very well. I am not sure if this still is true but with the older Geovision cards I had to send the card back in order to upgrade to more cameras where with the Avermedia card it seems all I need is to get the additional connector bracket. Someone have experience with both products?

I am evaluating a PowerTelecomm PDVR-8100 unit but have run into a major problem. When the unit is accessible from the network a simple port scan to its IP address will lock up the entire unit. Unfortunately PowerTelecomm has not responded to my inquiries about it yet and I am a little concerned about that. Has anyone else noticed similar problems with any other standalone DVR? I'll be looking at the other units on my shortlist now: 1) Advanced-CCTV DVR-808 [link removed by mod - reason dealer pricing] 2) ICRealtime Pro http://www.icrealtime.com/solutions/dvrpro.html (pushing my budget) 3) ICRealtime Flex http://www.icrealtime.com/solutions/dvrfx.html The best deal would be the older DVR-1606A but I am not sure I should be buying a unit that is being phased out, even though it seems to be a fine unit. Any recommendations for any of the above? Thanks Dan

Sure we are talking about a budget DVR but when someone tries to enter a network they don't really care what machine or application it is. They simply try to explore how they can use the device or computer to enter the network and that's enough to freeze the unit. Looking at the logs for my network I see about 4 intrusion attempts a day on average. Oh well, I think this subject has been discussed to death now. I'll start a new thread with my IC Realtime findings.

I used a program I wrote myself and it does try to open each port and if it suceeds it tries to send a couple of line-feed characters and that was enough to freeze the unit. Then I used the Telnet program to see if I could replicate it that way and I could. When the engineers look at the networking code it should be quite obvious where the problem is.

I apologize but I was out of town and had no opportunity to respond further. Just try opening the remote viewer port with the telnet application from a command prompt (telnet dvr.ip.address 9310). The open will succeed but because the data is not recoginzed by the DVR it seems to freeze. You can say that it is a security feature that the shuts down to prevent hacking but if that's really the intention then it should only close down the network communication but still record the cameras. Otherwise if someone tries to exploit this port they can shut down the machine and I may not even notice the frozen DVR until it is too late. I think the fix should be simple by hardening the network routines. I am also surprised that this stops the entire DVR, as a triplex DVR I would have imagined that networking be a separate tasks and that it may freeze up the networking task but not the entire machine. Anyway, after my return this weekend I now picked up the ICRealtime DVR yesterday. I am going to configure it this week and play with it a little and then post some comments.

End user

Just as an information to others in the forum, I have contacted Sam offline. I understand that there was a conference last week and that resources might have been stretched a little bit and that probably is the reason I did not receive any response. However, I have contacted various other companies during that time and they all responded in very timely fashion. I would expect a tech department to be available at least during regular business hours (i am not expecting 24x7), even during a trade show! Dan

This forum is great. I got a lot of information from reading various threads and narrowed the choices down to two units and got two quotes. They both seem to be great units and I'll have to pick one now. 1) Advanced-CCTV DVR-808 2) ICRealtime Pro 8 Surprisingly as a whole package deal the units are very competitive price wise (coincidentially both quotes include the same cameras). Maybe it's coming to a coin toss

Thanks both of you for the feedback. I have seen the extensive ICRealtime threads and it pretty much explains everything. Seems like a good unit. My requirements aren't that big: 1) 8 channels 2) network client application for monitoring/playback 3) ~[edit by mod - price removed] (ICRealtime Pro is pushing my budget but I still consider it because of the excellent feedback) "wish" items 4) preferrably D1 recording resolution 5) preferrably browser based remote software available for monitoring and playback The PowerTelecomm unit is pretty nice, if it wasn't for the crashes. I hope that they are in control of the firmware and could possibly come up with a fix but so far they have not responded AT ALL. This makes me a little worried, I would want a company that responds to my technical inquiries in a more timely fashion. Now their sales team has always been very responsive, up to the point when they sent the unit... Not trying to talk bad about them, just sharing my personal experience Dan

Have any US distributor?

I like the Nuvico unit but I am hesitating to order it. I am not sure I would be satisfied with the 720x240 recording resolution. That's why I had originally looked at the PowerTelecomm unit because the spec sheet said 720x480 recording resolution but a recent firmware/software upgrade changed that, according to their sales person. Are there any standalone DVRs that have 480 lines resolution or do I have to consider a PC based system?

Spytown, I meant to write NVDV2 How would you say the Nuvico compares to the PowerTelecomm? I am starting to think that it would be safer for me to go with a better known brand like Nuvico and I feel that there would be a better chance for future updates.

Remote Access will be the exception, and not used frequently at all. Any recommendation for a MPEG-4 unit? My budget is around $1500. I haven't considered it. I used to have a four and an eight camera system based on a Geovision DVR card but I was not very pleased with the handling and the performance. So I thought a standalone unit might be the better way to go. Thanks for your feedback Dan