DavidWD

Hi everyone. Due to a recent break-in at one of our stores, the owner has decided to beef up our surveillance system. We had a girl calling around for quotes, but the owner didn't like the quotes so I started doing some research and told him that we could probably do it ourselves for half as much. Now the owner has given me the task of working on this. We have 12 Sprint stores ins Middle and West Tennessee. Our stores mostly need 3-6 cameras tops. Since our main office is located in Nashville, TN, we would like to be to view live video as well as retrieve recordings over the internet. I have also recently been tasked with renegotiating and/or replacing our DSLs and phone lines, so we will soon be getting static IPs to simplify a few things. I have been doing a little bit of research over the last couple weeks and I think I have a general plan, but I could use some help with specifics. I think that CCTV with DVRs is the way to go. IP cams get expensive quickly, and PC based systems are more expensive while virtually guaranteeing that eventually some idiot is going the mess with the computer and screw it up. I have seen a few kits with 8 channel DVRs and 4 cameras at reasonable prices and think that we can buy one of those plus 1-2 better cameras per location to be placed in strategic locations. If we can record on 4-6 cameras at 7-15 fps as needed with motion detection at D1 resolution, we should have something decent to turn over to the police in the event of future break-ins. I've seen the name Dahua and Avtech here and KGuard and NightOwl at NewEgg and TigerDirect and I've seen a number of boxes with no branding being sold by various websites. Most of them seem to be rebranded Chinese equipment. I'm just not sure which is the best way to go at this level. They all seem to be pretty similar and I don't want to choose a system and find out that I've screwed up royally. Are there any real major differences between these systems? If so, what are they and how can I avoid choosing something that does not meet our needs?