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That noise looks typical of many cams, but it should improve with more light or IR. An internal fan may not help if the camera is enclosed and air tight, as it will just move the hot air around inside. However, if the board is running hot and there's room inside the housing, a heat sink and/or fan on the board may help move heat away from the board. If the camera housing feels hot at night, you could blow air across the camera housing to cool it off, or add heat sinks to help move the heat away. Active cooling would be even better, but that would be getting pretty complex, and it would be likely be cheaper and easier to buy a cooler running camera. Does the camera run on POE? On some cams I've tested, the chip that converts the 48Vdc POE voltage to the 12Vdc that the camera runs on can get very hot. You might generate less heat if you switched from POE to 12Vdc, but you'd have to try to see, as it depends on the circuit design. A 12Vdc adapter is not expensive.

Did you install the Active-X control when you connected? Older Vivoteks may only work with Internet Explorer. I have an old 6112, but haven't run it for a while, and don't remember if it worked with any other browsers. Typically, if you see the controls and text but no video, it means the active-x isn't working. You may need to enable Active-X in IE:

There's a pinned thread on Dahua firmware at the top of the forum, but it's pretty huge, and many of the links are dead. For the 4/5 series, you can get NTSC firmware here: http://wrightwoodsurveillance.com/forum/thread-89.html and PAL firmware here: ftp://ftp.wintel.fi/drivers/dahua/cam-fw/IPC-HX5(4)XXX/ I haven't used either of these, so be careful, as always. Dahuas can brick with the wrong firmware. You can also find sources by googling this, including the quotes, as well as other variations on the file name, like this: "General_IPC-HX5(4)XXX" or "IPC-HX5(4)XXX"

For 24x7 fixed bit rate recording, the only thing that matters is the bit rate for each cam. For 4Mb/sec on all cams: 4Mbps (bits) = 0.5MBps (bytes) 0.5 x 60 = 30MB per minute 30 x 60 = 1.8GB per hr 1.8 x 24 = 43GB per day 43 x 14 cams = 600 GB per day With 6TB, you should be getting 10 days. If they're all set for 8Mbps, you'd get 5 days. This will all vary based on the individual bit rates, and if you use VBR, it will depend on other factors, like amount of motion and detail.

That cam won't be much good for plates unless they're pretty close, because of the 2.8mm lens. Plate recognition is all about pixels per foot and lighting. In the US, a car plate is 1 foot wide, and you'll want 80 ppf to get reliable recognition. If the plates are at an angle to the camera, you'll need even more, as the plates will be less than 1 foot side visually. If they'll be facing straight on at the camera, that's best case. Daytime is best case, but as the light drops, Hik resolution suffers, and you'll either need good lighting or a faster lens/camera combination. In addition, you need shorter exposures in low light to avoid motion blur; the typical 1/30 sec Hik night setting won't work on moving cars due to blur, and moving to 1/250 or whatever requires that much better lighting. I have a hik 2032 at 1080p doing plate capture at about 70 feet, and it works fine in the daytime with a 25mm lens. At night, it's no good unless the plates are lit up by another car's lights. The on-camera IR is way too weak at that distance to help. You can tell how many ppf you're getting by taking a still capture with a plate in the frame, opening it in Paint or similar, and drawing a box around it. Paint will show you how many pixels it is. Generally, if you want both a wide view and plate recognition, you'll need 2 cameras - one like you linked to for the area view, and another with a much longer lens dedicated to plate capture. Here's a thread with some discussion and examples. viewtopic.php?f=19&t=44416

Field of view is dependent on the sensor's physical size, the lens size, and the image circle size of the lens. 2 different 3.6mm lenses can have different size image circles, resulting in different FOVs with the same sensor. If the sensors are different sizes from each other, this adds to the confusion. Vendors were not very good at giving true FOV measurements on the older cams. They're getting better, and some have even started giving the FOV at different resolutions, but it's not easy to trust them without measuring for yourself.

The domes can have a tendency towards IR reflection, though it depends on how well the lens isolation foam is seated and how close to the edge of the dome the lens is adjusted. Many people prefer the DS-2CD2332-I turret for this reason, but the regular domes work well for a lot of people, and are a bit sleeker than the turrets. I'm not sure the turret is available in 4MP.

The 2032 and other similar Hiks will all work fine, but you'll want the appropriate lens size to cover your area. If you take your existing cam and use it to try out the coverage, you'll get a good idea of what you need. With the cam 10' above the porch, you'll need to cover the approach to see faces, as you'll only get the top of their heads when people are at the door. If it were me, I'd look at mounting the cam above the window or beyond it at the corner, covering both the approach and the front door. This is how my front door cam is set up, and it gives pretty good coverage.

For cams you have, check the serial number. If it contains CCCH, it's Chinese; western region cams contain CCWR. There are region hacks to convert the cam, but I don't have any direct experience with them.

You probably have a Chinese region camera that came with hacked firmware for English. Installing western region firmware can cause problems like constant reboot loops. If your serial number contains CCCH, this is your problem. There are a few ways around it, like installing older firmware with the TFTP method or hacking the newer firmware. It can be fixed if you're a bit technical, but is a pain. There are a few pinned posts at the top of the forum that discuss this. If you search on bricked 2cd2032 (same issues), you'll find other posts on this.

Grandstream makes a 4 channel encoder for $100: http://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-GXV3504-IP-Video-Encoder/dp/B0027GL8P6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1442433823&sr=8-2&keywords=grandstream+encoder I don't have any experience with them, but you can search for reviews. Another option would be buying a hybrid NVR, but that will be pricey for 16 channels. For a single camera, best bet is to buy a new IP cam.

Yes, BI requires a Windows PC, and it can require a good bit of CPU power, depending on the number of cams, resolution, and frame rate. For 2 cams, you could get by with a mid range computer. I don't think there's any way to do this on the camera; at least not on any that I'm familiar with.

The older Dahuas, like the 3300 and 2100, had no direct IR control. IR was turned on and off by the sensor on the IR board; it didn't matter if the software was even running. I believe the 4300 series is controlled by firmware, but it's been a while since I tested it.

There are issues with Chinese region cam and NVR firmware upgrades that can prevent an NVR from connecting to the cams or prevent the cams from booting up. Here are a few checks: - Verify the SNs of each cam. Any with CCCH in the SN is a Chinese region cam, and can't be upgraded to western region firmware without jumping through hoops. These usually come with hacked firmware initially, and often the version on the cam doesn't match the version on the label or box. - Any cams with CCWR in the SN are western region, and can be updated with Hik firmware from the web sites. - Check to see if you can still connect to all the cams by browser. Some failed upgrades cause a constant reboot loop, and those cams won't be accessible if this has happened. - Chinese region NVRs with newer firmware will only connect to Chinese region cams, I believe, but I don't have much experience with these. I'm sure this can be hacked as well. There are some pinned posts at the top of the forum that address some of these issues, but it's a complicated area that's not always easy to fix.

Don't think so - that would be handy, though. This would be a good thing to add to future firmware releases, if any manufacturers are paying attention. You can do this in Blue Iris by cloning the camera and using different settings for each version, and it's quite handy. Lots of people use this for a wide variety of things, like what you want to do, making time-lapse and motion detect video from one camera, having different masked areas, and so on.