voip-ninja

That sounds great, thanks. The area that the camera would be going is more or less pitch black at night and we simply want the ability to determine if someone is there or not, not necessarily high quality detail for facial recognition and the like. I forgot that with my CAT5 wall plate run in the corner of that area it's going to be impossible to orient a dome camera properly without re-routing the cable feed up to the ceiling, so more than like I am going to have to go with a bullet camera if I really want to do this, it looks like ACTi and Vivotek both make ones for around $300 that might fit the bill. I'm also looking at the ACTi camera (7000 series PT) for my property corner camera position, looks pretty good, the night mode samples look amazing.

Yeah, I don't care about audio really which is why I was looking at the much cheaper Vivotek 8134V. I still might get one to try, might be good for my front door location.

Thank you very much for the lengthy and extremely informative reply. This will give me something to chew on for the next day or two while I consider ordering one of these alternative cameras to try out. The temperature here rarely goes below zero, and the Panasonic PT cameras have held up through three winters now without any trouble. I think it got down to -10 once and I checked and all of them were still working. I do power them with small single mid-span PoE injectors instead of using a PoE ethernet switch. I have just now been experimenting with the Surveillance Station that is built into my Synology NAS and I have to say that it's a little bit better than I had expected, and the iPad and iPhone apps work pretty well. It can record sound but if sound is recorded then the clips cannot be played on the iPad/iPhone which is unfortunate.... accessing the surveillance software remotely (from work) doesn't seem to be working terribly well but I will continue toying with it. They also build a little 8 channel decoder box that sits on the network and can decode up to 8 cameras and then dump the audio/video output to a television or PC monitor via VGA (I have no idea why they did not just use HDMI)... this is actually pretty slick as I could wire this box up in my entertainment center with an HDMI converter to my flat screen and then with a quick button push I could see the cameras without having to get out my phone or a computer, etc. The box is about $280 so I might have to break down and get one to try. The only problem with the Synology is that they charge $50 per license for each additional camera past the first one, but since I only need two more it's not too outrageous of a cost. I really appreciate your information on the ACTi cameras, I will look up info on the models you mentioned. At most I need about 1 megapixel and maybe 30fps, and I don't have room for a large enclosure, so I might have to reconsider bullet cameras (but I really prefer dome units).... is there anything on the horizon I will kick myself for not waiting on that will be available within the next month or two? Thanks.

Looks like Acti 3511 might also be a good option, although a bit on the pricey side.

I don't have street lights providing illumination. I have a front entry that is walled on three sides, so at night it's more or less pitch dark. I could put motion activated lights up, which, if I did, would mean I could just keep using the Panasonic cams that I already have. I was also hoping to get something with a bit more resolution than an analog CCTV, but I will keep the analog converter in mind as a potential option.