micpecc

H.264 provides the best performance I've seen... I sell the HIKVISION H.264 boards and software developed here in the US. THE VIDEO SPECIALISTS

Just got the scoop from ACTi on the "www.hinet.net" thing: "Hinet.net is an ISP in Taiwan and the www.hinet.net page is always online. We set this default link to check video server's WAN status.Video server will ping 'www. hinet.net" to determine whether this video server/ IP camera is connected to the internet. So, customer can see "WAN Connect Status: Connect" in the system info page at web configurator."

Yes, I definitely recommend setting up IP filtering on your router to prevent unwanted visitors to your video encoders/IP cameras... some routers will even allow filtering by MAC address. Also, change the port for the web server to something other than port 80.

That is one area where the ACTi products work well - all the products have two ethernet ports (one for LAN and one for WAN). Foe example: WAN port can be throttled down, and the LAN port can be set for full frame-rate onsite recording/viewing.

Response back from ACTi regarding this issue: "Thanks for customer's input and we totally agree with him that the video encryption is important. However, in our current design, we didn't setup the video streaming protection on our hardware. If hackers get the IP address, ID and PW then they can access to that IP device. They can also use the Ethereal to capture the traffic. Currently, we survey all products in the market, like AXIS, Sony, VCS..etc. all of them didn't do the video encryption yet. We focus on providing stable and good video quality first and the video encryption will be spec in our next generation product." Stay tuned... The Video Specialists US ACTi Distributor

Hey Guys: I am one of the few ACTi distributors here in the US... I have been pushing their products for well over a year now. You just can't beat the performance & reliability for the price. They are extemely responsive to customer requests, and they are one of the most supportive & ethical companies that I deal with. Besides the free software they offer (which is pretty darn good), there are now several 3rd party software companies that provide support - Milestone, ONSSI, D3Data, Imron. And for Enterprise class applications, Ortega InfoSystems is pretty incredible. PlanetCCTV, another enterprise-class software package we offer will also have support for ACTi soon. Mike Peccatiello THE VIDEO SPECIALISTS www.thevideospecialists.com

Tim: I'm an authorized distributor for ACTi here in the US... let me know what you're looking for. MICPECC