boutym

Do you know how/with what they patched your IE9? I've had this issue with IE7, IE8 and IE9 and Samsung support pretty much blew me off. They tried to blame my network, my workstation and everything else except their stuff. When I showed them without question it had to be a problem with their stuff (had them login remotely to the DVR) they didn't have an answer and left me hanging.

Give me a few days and I'll get you some video. I'm still playing with it. You backup periods of video to a backup device (USB thumb drive or USB HD) manually. I wish it would do it automatically or at timed intervals though. At any rate, the backup produces AVI files and I'll get a few up for you. The one thing that would be REALLY helpful would be a keyboard interface because it uses a virtual onscreen keyboard you manipulate with the mouse. Real pain in the rump sometimes, but once you have it setup you don't have to use it much and you can change some settings via keyboard through the web interface. I'm currently recording 4 channels, 704 x 480 @ 7fps which is adequate. If I up the frame rate to 15 I have to lower the resolution to 104 x 240. It would take a while for me to go though all the combination's to tell you what it can do at various settings on each channel. If the one at Costco is the Samsung SDE-120 it would be the same one. I see them listed as SDE-120N also, but I believe they are both the same thing. I've been looking around at various video security systems and for the price you really can't beat this thing. The cost is low enough that if you needed more cameras you could just buy two or even more.

I tried the Logitech system and frankly it's junk. Nice image, but beyond that it's useless. Motion detection is horrible and motion detection recording is all that it does. There are no provisions for time-lapse or continuous recording. The image in a dark environment has an annoying halo around it. It uses a flash card inserted into the camera for recording, so changing a bad card or changing to a higher capacity card can mean dragging out a ladder. I don't really feel it's a worthy contender for an outside system since each camera has to have an available electrical outlet. In addition, you can't use surge suppressors in-line with any of the components, as these can interfere with the signal. So, protecting your investment with surge suppression isn't an option. When you figure the cost of installing this system with say 4 outside night vision cameras you are easily looking at over a grand with the installation of supporting components and you still don't have all the features that a low end Samsung SDE system can give you. Complete waste of money in my opinion.

I found out what Continuous/Motion does. It continuously records same as Continuous mode, but will highlight change the color of time periods in the search function screen showing periods of motion during recording... usually. I found playing with it that with a lot of obvious motion (me walking around in front of the cameras) it won't always flag a period in time as sensing motion. It's inconsistent. I did find one function that is completely useless and that is email notification of motion events. It sends snapshots, but rarely do they capture what the camera actually saw during the event. So far it also has only sent images from one camera even though I set it to send images from 2 cameras. The email will show which channels had motion events, but only one channel is ever shown. I'm still unable to control search functions or see video using Internet Explorer even following the instructions in the manual. I can see live video of one camera at a time using Firefox and Safari, but cannot control search functions. With any browser I can change most of the settings. I still like the system as I feel it's a good value for the price, but the lack of a quality user manual and the quirks of the software make it somewhat frustrating to setup. I've emailed support several times and to date have not gotten any calls or return emails.

I just installed the SDE-120N, which I believe uses the same cameras as the 3000. Here's what I know so far from mine: For the emails to be sent there is a setting that says Security and it's either on or off. On requires that the SMTP server be SSL capable. Off will allow sending to a non-SSL capable mail server. I'm still trying to figure out the rest of it. One thing I can't quite figure out is there are three main settings for recording. One is Motion, one is continuous and the other Continuous/Motion. The first two are obvious, but the Continuous/Motion has me a little baffled. With Motion, you set x seconds before and after the event for recording, along with the motion detection area (motion detection by the way works very well with this system). Continuous is what it is. What I believe Continuous/Motion does is start the recording and continue recording throughout the event with some threshold for no motion to trigger the end of the event. But, my testing still hasn't proven this is the actual function of this setting. The manual for the system is horrible. While it's understandable in what it does say for the most part, it doesn't explain what particular settings do. It's very much an experiment and I haven't had a lot of luck finding information on the specifics of the system. I have also been unable to get full use of the web interface. I can make changes to the configuration, but cannot view, search or playback video, which it should do. There are other little quirky things I don't care for that I feel it should be able to do, such as automated backup to either a network location or external USB drive. You can do manual backups, but automated would be much better. It also has a tendency to falsely detect motion at night with the outside cameras... VERY frequently I might add. I knocked down the sensitivity and it helped slightly. I have another night vision in the garage and it never falses, so not sure what's outside that keeps triggering it. Other than the minor quirks, it's a nice system for the money. Less than $600 for the SDE-120 with 2 night vision cameras and 2 normal cameras. It also has hookups for 4 other BNC connected video cameras just for monitoring (no recording of these) and connections for external alarm functionality. I'll see if I can come up with some video from it to post.