Soundy

This sort of thing?

Are you maybe thinking of http://www.cctvcamerapros.com ?

That would be my main concern.... unless the DVR can support widescreen resolutions (1440x900, 1680x1050, etc), I'd stick with standard 4:3 aspect LCDs.

Really depends on the DVR. Last time I tried to set someone up to view a VideoInsight DVR, there was nothing we could do that would make it work on his MotoQ (at least not with the default browser), while it worked perfectly on my Treo using the Blazer browser. I've also had varying success using IE Mobile, MiniMo, and Opera on my Windows Mobile 6 phone - different browsers handle it very differently.

If the cameras are 12VDC powered and use the jack pictured above (top pic), then all you need is a small "wall-wart" adapter for each one. They may not be as "elegant" as the "Power Distribution Box", but they're a lot cheaper and easier to find. You know the type: 99% likely that those cameras are 12V, tip-positive, and won't require more than about 300mA (maybe 500mA if it has IR LEDs) - those sorts of power supplies are almost literally a dime a dozen. http://www.rpelectronics.com/English/Content/Items/RP-1250-P.asp for example...

Most likely, the yellow is video and the red is power, but a description of the actual connectors would help... "Y/C separated" would normally refer to S-video signal output, but that would be VERY uncommon for surveillance cameras. If the connector on the camera looks like this, it's probably power: If it looks like this, it's probably video, or possibly audio: BNC is 99.99% likely to be video.

Two words: gel cell. Also handy for powering 12V cameras!

Put it all together, and you get the same thing: it's ultimately a balancing act between quality, retention, and price. Or to coin another old phrase: "good, quick, and cheap; choose two." People want to be able to buy an eight-camera DVR system for $600 from Costco, and have it do all the same things they see in the movies and on CSI - go back to six months ago, find a clip of the bad guy taken from behind in the dead of night, and draw out a perfect image of his face from his reflection in a door knob. You can't always make them understand why that's just not possible. Storage may be relatively cheap these days, but when you're looking at the need for 10TB or more, it can add up pretty fast at ~$200/TB. Add to that the need for some sort of enclosure and interface for all those drives, and the cost spirals. It's easy to say "space is cheap", but when you get to that level, it can start ramping up pretty fast. And then there was the old Diebold DVR we pulled out of a site a couple years ago... built on a P166 with a whopping 128MB RAM, running NT 4.0 and a plethora of custom frame-grabber and other cards. Thing took a JPEG still something like once per second, but only one camera at a time, and only at 1CIF... and had over *six months* of footage stored on an 80GB drive. Quality, though, left something to be desired - it was about comparable to VHS at 24-hour time-lapse speed.

That covers it pretty well, I'd say... but as Scorpion's other links show, there's a lot more involved in the final quality of the video, primarily the type and level of compression used, and the quality of the camera/lens system itself. Scorpion's hospital client, for example, should probably keep in mind that the DVD's he's thinking of were probably created using cameras worth at least a hundred-grand *each*, as well extensive post-production image processing... while he's probably using cameras and lenses that combined are worth maybe $300 each. As to adjusting your DVR settings, try looking for settings for compression type and amount (without knowing exactly what DVR is it, it's hard to say where to look).

But IP bans can also block "good" users from that same locale. Only if you wildcard your pattern. If it's a specific company, you'd probably only need to block one, maybe two IPs to cut them out. If others there have a legitimate reason to access the site, it might encourage them to have a "chat" with the offending over-zealous employees... Yes, but at least it forces them to work for it. If you're getting spam from random salesdroids at various offshore companies, they likely aren't internet-savvy enough to work around the blocks, and even if they are, it's probably not worth their time. Well, obviously nothing is 100%, but every bit helps. Do you "de-implement" the post count thing now, because some spammers find a way around it? Or is it still effective at HELPING to reduce the problem? Similarly, do you not bother moving to a CAPTCHA for signup and IP bans for offenders, just because some people will be able to work around them? Anyway, the point is, they're there in the upgraded version... they CAN be used, if desired, but they're certainly not forced on the admin(s). There are plenty of other reasons to upgrade, those are just a couple more that may be attractive.

Sarcastic? You?? Noooooooooo, never, not at ALL!! You forgot bitter and just plain mean. Also your request may take a little while....WoTLK comes out tonight Bitter?? Noooo... cynical and jaded, maybe, but certainly not bitter?! Er... WoTLK?

Well I dunno about v2, but v3 also supports IP bans...

Well, keep in mind that's just shy of £1000 for 24 channels... to make 200 you'll need 8 of those, so there you're up to £8000. You'll need some serious processing power to handle that as well - keep in mind that while raw video itself is a lot higher bandwidth than audio, most DVRs are using hardware compression, reduced framerates, and motion-detection recording, all of which help reduce the "continual" demands on CPU and I/O. Unless you have software that only records audio when there's sound detected, you're going to be recording at full bandwidth, on all channels, all the time, which will require a LOT of CONSTANT processing power and some pretty fast disk I/O. And keep in mind, too, if you can only run one card in a PC (depending on the card's driver design and the software), then you're looking at multiple PCs, also adding to the cost... And of course, there's the software cost, as you're looking at a somewhat specialized usage, and may require some fairly custom, and therefore fairly pricey, software... All told, £65,000 may not be too bad for a ready-made solution, once you factor in your total costs and the time involved to "roll your own". Just something to consider...

Sarcastic? You?? Noooooooooo, never, not at ALL!!

Where is the spam coming from - actual users, or bots? phpBB3 integrates a CAPTCHA to the registration process, which on the site I'm running has eliminated any bot signups (so far, anyway). We had a real problem with them on the phpBB2 system, to the point that one of the admins banned all new signups from gmail.com addresses...

Sounds like possible ground issues to me as well... with each camera on a separate transformer, however, it shouldn't be directly related to the power source. One possibility is if the affected cameras are in grounded metal enclosures, giving them separate ground paths from the coax shields - unplugging one of the affected cameras and shutting it down would then eliminate the ground loop. Disconnecting one of the noisy cameras' video lines should also clear up the noise on the other. The other possibility is that one or more of the lines run near a source of strong, randomly-occurring EMI... such as HVAC, an elevator, etc. See if you can correlate the noise to anything else turning on in the building.

Agreed, it may depend on local codes, but in most areas, I can't see this being a problem - codes likely won't come into play unless it's all new construction. I'm familiar with these Pelco supplies and they're very solid and well-designed. Your main concern is more likely to be access to the thing in case you need to change/add wiring or change a fuse.

Wow, haven't seen a rackmount supply like that... it's very pretty, and probably very pricey as well, for what it needs to do. Fact is, you can probably get by on your current cameras with something like a single 75VA-100VA closed-frame transformer, and a simple 12V/500mA "wall-wart" adapter, at a fraction of the price. If you want to go with something for later expandability, you could go with a standard "metal can" power supply like the ALTV2416300CBM, and put a 12VDC regulator board (similar to this) inside it to feed the 12V camera(s).

Hey Thomas, I sent you a PM too, never got a reply...

Second the suggestion to upgrade to phpbb3! I just did this for another site I help administer, and there are SO many more features, especially for the administration! Much more control over site permissions and functions, as well. Takes a little learning and a little more time to tweak up, but it's worth it in the long run. There's a great portal that can be added as well, that will display things like top posts, most recent posts, most active threads... a calendar, statistics, etc. One cool addition, too, is the ability to create custom bbcode tags... for such things as easy YouTube embedding, something that would be useful for a video-oriented site

Most DVR cards (except maybe cheap some no-name ebay cards) will include software... and really, most vendors use one of two or three different types of cards, just with their own branding and usually locked to their own software. So the more important question is, what is the best DVR card/software *package*... and the answer to that is, "it depends" - mostly on your specific needs. That said, we've been using the VideoInsight systems for years and have found them powerful and reliable. They do tend to be more toward the higher end of the price range, but as with most things, you do get what you pay for. As for limiting space used, that depends on the software. Some will let you designate the free space to leave, others pre-allocate the space used for recording, and still others simply fill up all the freespace on the drive(s) they're given. VideoInsight allows you to specify the maximum size for each video clip, as well as how much free space to leave on the drive. I strongly recommend having a drive or partition dedicated to your video storage, though - the problem is, if you put anything else on the drive, that just takes away from your storage space, and thus the retention time. If you're not paying attention, and you fill up the drive with other stuff, you could end up with very little record time left for your video.

Any details Cybervision might need, we'd probably need as well, to be of any help. Probably best just to get it over with and call them directly

Yes, you could use Cat-5 with video baluns to run your signal - you can also run power over that wire. You'll need some sort of video-capture device to get the video into your PC, though, and many include the software.

Bluescreens are most often caused by hardware-related problems... have you tried moving the Geo card to a different slot in case there's a conflict?

This doesn't make any sense - is your cable modem an internal card? If it's an external box of some sort, as almost all of them are, I don't see any way your capture card could be affecting it. It might be conflicting with your network card, but that still should have no effect on the modem...