jasauders

Not to cloud your options but I chose the path I did based on the lack of annual costs. I use Bluecherry for my system. When you buy a license with Bluecherry, that license is good for that major version. Example, they're on version 2 right now, and will be for some time yet. Upon the release of version 3, you can upgrade from 2 to 3 for 50% of the cost (according to their docs). The alternative is to just stay on version 2 for life. There's no force-upgrade-march involved. The software is very much a server+client relationship. Server is Linux based, with most of their focus on Ubuntu. The client is a separate component which interfaces with the server, allowing you to use an actual interface instead of having to VNC/RDP/whatever to the server/NVR itself to view feeds and whatnot. While the server is focused on Ubuntu, their client is cross platform - Windows, Mac, Linux. I run continual recording on mine with six 3 MP cameras. Current server load is 0.00, so basically, next to nothing. Not bad for a low wattage i3 processor. Motion of course would spike it up a bit, but overall the software is pretty light. Unfortunately, no mobile app yet, though it's not difficult to get the live feeds interfacing with something like TinyCam, which is primary what I use for remote view. If playing back previous feeds via smartphone is a necessity then this may be a bust, though between my upload speed at home and bandwidth capabilities out and about, even remote view is a blessing. Not sure how this aligns with your needs, but if nothing else, just an idea.

Just to follow up, a new (to me) one I've been tinkering with lately is Bluecherry. I read into the history of Bluecherry a bit. If what I read has been processed in my mind properly, they have been contributors to the main Linux kernel for some time. They're a front runner in Linux compatible capture cards for analog systems. They also have a server solution, which has proved to work quite well in my experience. The server requires Linux. Ubuntu is their primary target. They also have a client which is open source. This client works on Mac, Linux, and Windows. BSD support is on the radar. Their Linux client targets Ubuntu, however RPM packages for Red Hat/Fedora are available. I was able to use debtap from the Arch AUR and convert the bluecherry-client.deb file to a pkg for easy installation in Arch. The software is not free. For 50 bucks you get a 4 pack of home licenses to use with the cameras. Licenses are stackable. I purchased a 50 dollar 4 pack and later, when I went from 4 cameras to 6 cameras, purchased a second for 50 dollars. So I have 8 slots; 6 currently in use. The server software is very light. The interface is very easy to use. The development team has been very responsive in my experience. I am doing full time record with all six cameras, all are 3 megapixel, all 10 FPS, and my low end/low wattage/several generation old i3 is all but asleep. They support motion detection, which seems to work well. I just personally prefer full time recording so I only tinkered with motion detect for a short time. Just another idea. I tinkered with the 30 day demo and liked it so much I went all in with it. I was even happier that I could just dump it so easily on my existing Ubuntu Server that I have running in the basement. That server is simply a large backup/centralized file server. I added a 2TB WD Purple and installed Bluecherry. I was up in minimal time. There is no mobile app available for Bluecherry, though if you look through their docs, you'll see instructions for setting up mobile view with IP Cam Viewer. I had a better experience with TinyCam Pro and use that. I wrote up a guide and sent it to developers, which was posted to their docs/wiki page within 2 days of being sent (kudos for being so vigilant, Bluecherry team!) Anyway, just another idea. I'm a fan of it.

(My response translated to Spanish) Hola. Estoy utilizando Google Translate para este mensaje como yo no hablo español . Una cantidad preocupante de cámaras requiere Internet Explorer con un plugin ActiveX para ver la transmisión en vivo en un navegador web . Esto bloquea a menudo fuera sistemas basados ​​en Linux , Mac y, a menudo , el acceso a transmisiones en vivo a través del navegador . Es frustrante , exasperante , y francamente estúpida que en el año 2016 , todavía estamos tratando con esto. Tal vez algún día que va a cambiar . (My response in English) Hi there. I am using Google Translate for this message as I do not speak Spanish. A disturbing amount of cameras require Internet Explorer with an ActiveX plugin in order to see the live stream in a web browser. This often locks out Linux based systems, and often Macs, from accessing live streams through the browser. It's frustrating, maddening, and downright stupid that in 2016, we're still dealing with this. Maybe someday that'll change.

By chance is there a QR code in the manual? I just picked up a Foscam indoor camera to act as a baby camera for our 2nd daughter. It had minimal things in the package but in the documentation it had a QR code for app setup. Just a thought.

ZoneMinder recently went through a face lift. New web site, updated version of ZM itself, etc. Looks like the team is doing a great job. I installed ZoneMinder on a spare system at home and it's been working great. Tonight I plan to move it to my main server, which is otherwise just a file server to host our main files/backups/etc. There's a few nuances with ZoneMinder that I had to tweak. I think they were 1) Check in options to enable ffmpeg as my cameras had issues with direct RTSP, 2) put in the path to the ffmpeg executable in the options menu where prompted, which I think was /usr/bin/avconv, or something similar, 3) added sleep 15 to the startup script to enable auto start of ZoneMinder on a fresh boot. I forget where I found this, just some blog post that I dug up on Google. It's very nice to see this project doing a good job. Excellent team. Open source. I can use whatever hardware I want. I can tweak it however I want. No proprietary mysteries. (Just my 2 cents)

Thanks for your response, Securame. I understand CCTV is not operating in a way to benefit the YouTubers of the world. I guess what it comes down to is I simply... have my stance. Whether it be a CCTV topic or not, I just feel (quite strongly) that technological things like this only complicate matters when things are intentionally designed to be unnecessarily complex. I did some reading on CCTV legalies before. My understanding is that for it to be upheld in court, the date/time stamp must reside on the embedded video itself - otherwise it's useless. I didn't read of any other requirements -- not even one mention of the exclusive formats being beneficial in any way on a legal ground. If that'd be a thing, that'd be news to me, especially given my .MP4 save-to-NAS feeds from my Vivotek cameras were used to put two guys back in jail (again) for digging through unlocked cars at night. My last understanding was despite the 100-or-so cars they hit, I was the only one with a video feed of it. Years ago when I worked IT in a different school district, some kids broke into the school to do some sort of senior prank. The DVR/NVR they had (DVR with network/web browser access) actually had no export option (I'm not kidding). Best I could do was run a screen recorder program while playing the live feed back in regular watching speed, then stop the screen record when I got to the end. That file dumped into an AVI. That file as well was handed over to state police, which escalated matters in that case against the students since the students somehow associated a lot of internal damage to the school somehow being a "senior prank". Securame - I'll PM you my email. Thank you very much for that suggestion of testing a Hikvision export within Ubuntu. That'll help put some of these considerations to rest. The only other thing I'd be curious about is whether Hikvision's save-to-NAS feature records videos in one of those exclusive formats or a more flexible format that would be easier to work with. Do you by chance know how they are saved? Thanks again for your time. P.S. - I'd be surprised if VLC on Windows had more functionality than VLC on Linux, though it would make for a *very* interesting test. A big reason why VLC is not included by default on an Ubuntu installation is the fact that VLC supports a multitude of codecs bundled with VLC itself that cannot be legally distributed automatically, but are still legal for utilization pending a manual install was done (automatic meaning already available by default on a free OS install such as Ubuntu). Other Linux distributions get away with this due to their smaller size, making them a smaller target, and also being a community driven distribution instead of one with the face of a company supporting them (consider the differences between Canonical's relationship with Ubuntu, whereas for example, Linux Mint just has some Mint developers from who-knows-where in the world working on the code - no official company to target with legal pursuits). The ultimate test for this would be to play the videos using Totem in Ubuntu (the default player) vs VLC media player (installed in Ubuntu manually). EDIT - Securame sent me the sample feed. It worked just fine using Totem and VLC on Ubuntu 15.04 (for anybody curious). Thanks Securame!

Curious if someone can further clarify something for me. I was browsing around and found a discussion comparing Dahua and Hikvision. This post was from a year ago, however, it was as follows. "Hikvision does require their software to view them in the browser. I didn't like that but oh well. I mainly view my cameras on my phone with the app IP Camera Viewer Pro." This immediately concerns me. This gets into a long story, but my dad has had a lot of issues on Windows which ultimately churned to his curiosity for "hey, that doesn't look like Windows on your laptop" and lead to him running Ubuntu - which is something he couldn't be happier with. Naturally, I question that this need for "additional software" just to work with the Hikvision to come with the assumed requirement of "Windows." It's probably worth mentioning that of course anything that requires ActiveX is an immediate "no" on the list of potential candidates. Can anybody confirm if Hikvision requires any sort of special application, or perhaps an operating system dependent plugin for a web browser? Even if it works in Firefox, Chrome, etc., fine, but if it requires a plugin for said browser, that's still something I'd want to investigate. Bottom line, I want something that works in any major web browser without futzing around with additional software and whatnot. I hadn't heard in all of my reading until now that this was ever a concern with Hikvision, but this comment has me wondering. EDIT - It's also worth mentioning that exported feeds that come out of whatever NVR setup I may choose need to be in a non-exclusive format. I understand Dahua, for example, requires a specific video player to play their specialized feeds. More and more I am liking the idea of just going the NAS route (by NAS I mean low power PC hardware + a Linux server OS). If nothing else, I know Vivotek can do NAS-based video dumps in MP4 format to a samba share. Then I can, you know, play them on any normal video player. So in a worst case scenario, I'll go that route, as I know it'll work with ultimate flexibility and minimal headaches. It's just I keep thinking that NVRs exist for a good reason, yet as I dig into this it's one headache/"oh a new major thing to look out for" after another. To summarize, looking for an NVR setup that addresses the following needs: 1) Equal cross platform support (Linux included), or better yet, cross browser support 2) Pending cross browser support exists, does not require a specific plugin only available on a particular platform (which nukes the credibility to saying it's cross browser support, but worth mentioning) 3) Is not locked to ActiveX/Internet Explorer in *any* capacity 4) Does not export files in an exclusive format requiring a special video player to view 5**) Allows the live feeds to be played in standard video players, i.e. VLC, etc. **While Hikvision sounds like it requires a Windows/Mac only plugin for Firefox to view live feeds, I can easily circumvent this with custom VLC.desktop (application launcher) files designated for each camera pending that Hikvision cameras support #5 -- playing live feeds in a regular video player. I do this in my current setup, as I can just click "rear cam" and boom - VLC launches already streaming the rear camera URL, etc. Pending that I cannot find a solution that fits the above parameters, I'll go the camera-PC/NAS route and call it a day. But that comes with some requirements of its own, namely that the cameras do not save-to-NAS in an exclusive format (#4 above). My Vivotek just does save-to-NAS in .MP4 files, and it's wildly convenient. (fun fact - when a situation last year came up and I handed my footage over to police, they expressed surprise that they could just "double click the files and they work", making me suspect a lot of the footage they get requires that police install other exclusive players to play these locked down formats they get from other folks). If the PC hardware/NAS route is the chosen path, it seems I need to make sure how well supported the save-to-NAS functionality is. I heard reports that Hikvision cameras were only able to see Samba shares that were less than 250GB in size due to a firmware bug... haven't seen any reports on whether that's been fixed or not. Sorry for the long post, edits, etc., but cross-OS/cross-browser/standard-exported-format support is important (critical) to me on not only a technical level given what OS is running on the client systems, but a philosophical level. I just can't bring myself to support companies that don't support end user flexibility.

Ha, you posted just as I edited above where I removed my mentioning of Amazon. I took note that Amazon's Hikvision is not official. I found myself on WrightwoodSurveillance.com, which from what I've read in the few minutes I've been reading online reviews, suggests it's a legit site to purchase from (I'll let you guys be the judge, though). The prices on this site aren't that bad. They're not as low as "Amazon" but certainly not in a range that makes my heart skip a beat. Just curious, if I were to go the Hikvision route and do full time recording, what's the interface/playback look like to the end user? The idea behind my Vivotek/server setup was to have a way to quickly identify when events happened despite having full time recordings (hence motion based JPG snapshots + 24/7 recording via save to NAS). If a Hikvision NVR can record 24/7 but still have some sort of listing of when events happened, and therefore, a quick way to replay those events when actual motion took place within the full time recordings, that'd be a total win. P.S. - Sounds interesting with the calendar idea. I may have to brew something like that up. I wonder about doing a split screen thing too, perhaps with a note taker on one corner of the screen where we can type things in (or just full screen both and have a keyboard there for a quick alt/tab), such as "need at the grocery store: ketchup, mustard, hot dogs, rolls" that syncs to our phones. Then when at the grocery store, we can pull it up. Sounds like an Evernote oriented task, or perhaps Google has a note taker within the Calendar UI somewhere. Same idea either way, but might have to explore around. Appreciate the added insight.

Thank you for your very detailed response. It gives me a lot of insight and a lot to consider. I think the biggest issue with my stance is I simply didn't know what pre-fab solutions made the most sense when it came to bang vs buck. Without any further insight coming from somewhere such as this forum I wouldn't feel even the slightest bit confident to pursue a pre-fab solution knowing full well the setup I could do would be darn near bulletproof. The one area that concerns me is if my dad would want to change anything about the setup. Honestly, I don't believe he would. He's a set it, forget it, etc. kind of guy. *But* if he would want to change anything it would almost certainly require my presence (or at least a TeamViewer session so I can remote in, then after SSH over). In terms of actual maintenance though, that's pretty straight forward. Server will pull in security updates automatically and require nothing from him whatsoever. I would prefer that he have the ability to change settings on the fly, though I really don't see that being an actual "thing" with him. He literally tasked me with "Find me something, let me know what I need to buy, and help me install it - that's it." But there again I hate to recommend him a route that limits end user preference changes. I've heard Hikvision mentioned before, but I didn't really know how well they scaled in terms of being a good product. I'll keep them in mind and do some searching around. I'm just quickly scanning online and feeling like I'm seeing a wide range here. There are some 8 channel NVR kits with cameras that are well over a grand. 8 channel is kind of obnoxious for his uses (his property isn't that huge to begin with), though I found some Hikvision cameras to be in a *very* acceptable price range while the 4 channel NVR is 300 bucks (without HDD). Likewise, these NVRs are POE anyway, which would eliminate the need for a POE network switch. There's still more of an up front cost with the NVR given the computer/server is "paid for" being a decommissioned rig, but the HDD expense exists either way, and the Hikvision cameras look cheaper than what I thought, which softens the overall financial blow. The one and totally irrelevant to CCTV benefit that he would get out of going the computer/server route is the fact he mentioned he wanted to set up some sort of backup procedure. With a dedicated server, I could just drop in another drive and bingo - CCTV drive, backup drive, winning. I have enough small book-sized Intel Atom based systems sitting around though - I'll get him hooked up on something like that as a home backup server if I go the NVR route (which based on what I'm reading here, I'm strongly considering). While I *love* my current setup with my CCTV, I'm looking at these Hikvision prices and really beginning to wonder if I should go this route when the time comes to upgrade my setup. I was just going to add two more Vivotek cameras, but being a creature of habit I was going to use the exact same make/model camera (to the tune of 299 per camera). That would give me 4 cameras total, but no NVR, still running off my server. Anyway, getting off topic to the original point of the thread. Bottom line is I have you, zr1, to blame for making my mind wander into other avenues when my future upgrade comes. P.S. - Excellent idea mentioning the Google Calendar display. I might consider whipping up the same thing. Are you rocking a full size LCD or going the route of the ras-pi LCD they just released?

Hello friends. Been a while since I posted here. Recently my dad asked me to help him with setting up a home CCTV system. He wants two cameras and to be able to hold feeds for at least a week. Easy, right? I don't have much experience in the CCTV field, but I do have a setup that works pretty gosh darn well for my own system at home. I'm on the fence between the two worlds of a custom computer based setup vs a prefab home kit. Here's some more background info. My setup at home consists of two Vivotek IP8332 bullet cameras. I have a Linux server running in my basement. This server handles many purposes, so when I had the idea of adding cameras I preferred just throwing a 2TB drive in there and mounting it as a surveillance feed drive for the cameras as opposed to opting into an NVR based setup with another box running 24/7. Installed on the Linux server is a program known as Motion. Motion simply pulls in the MJPG streams of the cameras and based on your threshold of pixel sensitivity, it tracks motion events and records them. I don't care for motion detection much at all, as I have difficulty putting full trust in my security into software deciding what is motion and what is not. I have Motion set up to take only one singular JPG snapshot per event, with each event lasting in 10 second intervals once motion is triggered. At the same time, the Vivotek cameras are recording H264 feeds at 10 FPS to the server using the camera's onboard "Save to NAS" feature. This combination provides me with JPGs to hit "next/next/next/next/next" in an effort to sift through false triggers vs actual events, with the full time feeds right there in the next directory should I need to review something in the full span. This process allows me to blast through events very quickly. Every night at midnight, I have a custom bash script which deletes the feeds that are over 30 days old. I'm on the fence because I look at my setup and think, okay, so that's kind of a custom job thrown together. You take a Linux server, some network cameras, Motion, and the Save to NAS feature on the cams and what you're left with is a series of JPG images to identify the events and MP4 files for the full time records. I hesitate to replicate my setup for somebody else because I'm the one who manages my server, and that's fine. But the up-beat catch to this is my setup works pretty much flawlessly. In two years I haven't had any major issues with it (not kidding - it's actually a very boring project of mine that I thought would be exciting and keep me busy, but it just kind of keeps working). Using a computer as an NVR, for me at least (IT guy speaking), simply makes sense. Any hardware issue I know how to fix. NVR/DVR wise, not so much. Perhaps this is a limitation of my knowledge with CCTV gear, but I'm relatively certain I can more easily track down a motherboard (or whatever) for the computer-based server as opposed to a board for an NVR - and likely cheaper at that. On the flip side, perhaps a pre-fab kit is the way to go. I mean, some of these kits have 4 cameras, POE, decent resolution, etc. They're sold as a kit, so everything needed is included. They'd be a bit cheaper than the setup I'm looking at for my dad with the computer side of things, but not by much, and at the expense of treading into unknown territory with whatever manufacturer I may go with. I simply don't know enough about, say, Zmodo, or Lorex or any other brands that are commonly seen around (I suspect some of you guys may (or may not) be cringing at those name drops right about now ) Benefits to the computer system: -The configs are done on my server -- as a result very easy to replicate on his. -Parts are wildly easy to come by with a computer based system in the event of a hardware issue. I can pick up a new drive, board, PSU, etc on NewEgg/Amazon/whatever with ease. Not sure how easy it is to find a replacement part on xyz-brand NVR. -Easy to use, as I would share out the surveillance drive via samba (file server service), making it accessible from his laptop while anywhere else in the house (I suspect prefab systems might offer some functionality like this, but one vendor to another can be so different, hard to articulate a common ground for expectations on the prefabs) -Given my IT job/hobby, I already have a small low powered rig at home that would serve nicely as the server. A server distro OS comes at no cost. AKA, only hardware/software that will cost money is the cameras, a UPS, and a small POE switch. Benefits to the prefab system: -Some setups I've seen appear to be cheaper despite the computer hardware savings, but I question their quality vs my computer based setup mentioned above with more expensive cameras and a no-cost server. -Customer support (I guess?) I left price out of the equation intentionally. I'm sure my dad wouldn't have an issue spending upwards of a grand as he simply wants this done. I just want to maximize the value of the dollar he's spending, but my knowledge and background really isolates me into a different camp than what I'm sure most folks here would side with. It's an issue I fully acknowledge - hence my presence here asking the experts. What say you, folks? What sort of solid, reliable, network based NVR/CCTV setup would you recommend to rival my proposed computer based setup? I have a hard time sifting through the countless makes, models, pros, cons, etc and being able to identify what is solid and what is lackluster. This is largely what sends me back to doing the computer based build since it's predictable - I know exactly what to expect out of it and I know how well it'll work. Thanks for any and all insight.

ZoneMinder is great software, but just be advised that it is a little resource intensive. I would not advise running ZoneMinder on a raspberry pi. To be completely honest, I wouldn't imagine that any sort of motion detection based software would run all that great on a raspberry pi, including "Motion", which is an alternative option to ZoneMinder, which in my experience has been lighter weight, but at the expense of not running a local database or a web interface. That said, I suppose you would be able to work with full time recording using the save to NAS feature on the cameras (assuming the cameras have that feature, though in my experience, all decent cameras I've looked at in the last year have this feature). I have a low wattage i3 server at home. It runs an array of different things. As a result, I wanted to trim the CPU processing back as much as possible as I didn't want my CCTV software to be thrashing the processor. My cameras support multiple streams, so what I did was I set up a 10 FPS H264 stream and a 2 FPS MJPG stream. I let "Motion" on my server pull in the MJPG stream to take singular JPG snapshots of motion, which saves to my "motion" directory. Simultaneously, the cameras use the save to NAS feature, recording 24/7 feeds at 10 FPS to my NAS to the "video" directory. That way I always have full time feeds, but I still have a series of JPGs I can flip through to get an idea of what happened throughout the day/night/etc. Since Motion is only running at 2 FPS, it runs lighter than it would if I were to push it at 10 FPS. The nice thing about Motion is it's config file based. Sure, it takes a little to get it set up, but then all you have to do is back up your 3 KB config file and your settings are backed up. Server blows up, no big deal, copy the file back and you're ready and rolling. Couldn't be easier. It may be worth it to try a setup like mine that I described above, though I am doubtful the raspberry pi would have enough processing power to stand up to that. Perhaps it does, though. If you bypass on motion detection altogether, your chances of the raspberry pi working go up considerably, as 'save to NAS' is simply a continual disk-save over the network, which requires so little CPU power to accomplish it's unreal.

Realistically, DDNS can be run on any device on your network. It doesn't have to originate from the DVR. My home server runs a DDNS client, so therefore anything hitting my domain gets routed accordingly. It sounds like you have three service options on your DVR, all of which don't sound appealing to you. Aside from those three options you're pretty much stuck unless you pull in the capability from a different device, whether it be a home server, router, or something else on your home network that stays running 24/7. As a result, I'd take a look at your router. Perhaps your router supports more services. Worth checking into. I understand not everybody runs a home server (though if you like your data, I highly recommend it), so my above option of what I use might not be up your alley. If you're technically inclined and want to throw around a few bucks, something like a raspberry pi makes for an extremely low powered computing device on your home network. You could always spin up a DDNS client there. The DDNS client I use (ddclient) supports who-knows-how-many services, so I just put in my info accordingly and it works great. That last idea is something I would consider to be a last resort, but nonetheless, it WOULD work if you had (literally) no other options. You have three options on the DVR, all strikeouts, and in my case I only have two options on my router, also strikeouts (for me). If nothing else it's at least worth mentioning, though it's also worth mentioning that it may require a bit of finaggling to get going.

I can understand not wanting to use Android. It's a pretty weird workaround, admittedly, but it works remarkably well in my experience so far. Another idea is to utilize VLC as a streamer. I'm not sure how adept you are with command line related things, but I had a discussion with some VLC developers the other day about running VLC from my Ubuntu Server (which is entirely command line based) to pull in the feeds and offer a stream to clients. That way the stream is being replicated by the server, instead of 10 clients connecting having to pull those 10 feeds from the cameras directly. You can do this through the GUI too, but anybody who works on servers knows that command line is, nearly all of the time, a more bomb proof solution. I haven't actually gotten this working as my honey-do list is ridonkulously long right now, but I intend to look into this a bit further. Given that VLC is cross platform, I'd be willing to bet that it can run from a Windows box acting as the streamer too. This is all speculation though as I haven't DONE this to verify it, but the VLC developers made it sound like it was a decent solution. Given how nice VLC is, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they're right. Anyway, just sharing thoughts.

In recent times I've had some frustration with this given that you cannot embed RTSP streams in HTML. Like the above user, yes, total WTF. I hope this changes in the future. For now, I did a weird workaround, but it seems to work for my needs. I'm not sure if this will apply to you but I figured I'd share just in case it strikes an idea. I have a dedicated desktop in my office specifically for streaming my cameras. This is largely due to the fact when I'm in my office I often have my music at ear bleeding levels (my office is in the basement of my house), so if people come to the door, which is frequent given I live down the street from my parents and within sight of two very close friends of mine, they're easy to miss. I'm a Linux guy, so I'm always tinkering in the Ubuntu/Fedora/whatever world of computing. Given that I had issues embeding the RTSP stream in HTML, I had to look to other means. Last night I got curious about Android, so I installed Android x86 on this computer. I removed the lock screen (feature within system settings) and installed TinyCam Pro + some sort of Autostart app. Now when I kick the system on, it loads TinyCam and begins streaming my cameras. Android may feel a little weird on a desktop, but given this unit has one purpose and one purpose only, it does the job nicely thanks to TinyCam. FYI if it matters - I've been a long time IP Cam Viewer user, but I cannot seem to make IP Cam Viewer respect the aspect ratio of my cameras, nor can I get it to utilize H264 streams. As a result, I'm sticking with TinyCam for the moment. In the very near future (as in, probably tonight since my wife and kiddo are away for a few days), I want to look into adding a video streamer to my Ubuntu Server. Maybe then I can utilize a web page, which would be nice for my laptops and whatnot, which right now are just utilizing the individual camera streams via VLC with bookmarks I have set for them.

Indeed. A large number of cameras I looked at came with FTP and SMB functionality. It's growing increasingly rare to see a camera that doesn't include those features actually (unless it's a crazy low end camera), which is nice for users like myself who just want them to record. A few days have passed since I posted, but I have to say this is the best setup I've had so far. It's crazy braindead simple. Cameras just record to NAS. There's no extra fluff on top to worry about. (I say fluff in the most respectful way possible as I know there are situations out there that may require certain functionalities) It just works and it works predictably well. The only semi minor 'meh' factor is that I have to make changes to each camera individually. This is hardly anything to write home about, because it's easy to pop into the web UI's of each camera and make whatever change I wanted. Given the export/import features, this would make things that much easier if I were setting up a dozen cameras like this and wanted them to all have the same config. This hasn't been a big deal for me since I pretty much set them once and forgot about them, but if you're somebody who wants to go in and tinker with the FPS on this camera, or that camera, etc., I can see it being a little more tedious. At the same token, you're STILL making changes while sitting on the couch with your laptop, whether you're connecting to multiple camera web UI's or connecting to each camera within the NVR software, so it can be argued to be quite similar anyway. I mentioned earlier that I utilize Motion (the software application in the Linux repos) specifically for taking JPG snapshots when motion activity occurs. I just found out (probably should have realized this sooner) that my cameras support motion detect and will actually take single snapshots and send them to the network share accordingly, along with the full time feeds. While I really like Motion and will likely continue to use it, I might have to tinker with the onboard functionality of these cameras. I remember motion detect recording was pathetic on the Vivoteks. I cannot stress that enough, it was just bad. But hey, if it's only taking single snapshots, maybe it won't be so bad. Worth at least trying anyway. This is the IT side of me speaking, but I quite like the fact that the cameras are using something generic, i.e. samba/file sharing services. Samba is something I can spin up in a hot second on literally any sort of Linux distribution or Windows install. That way if my server were to downright tank, I could plug in a spare that easily. Given that I actually have a secondary server on my LAN, this would be a quick adjustment of the IP settings and boom - done. This became somewhat apparent as the CCTV NVR at the one building at work tanked hard last week, and they're still waiting on a replacement to come in. Meh. CCTV isn't something I deal with at work (that falls under grounds/building crew instead of the IT department), but seeing it first hand certainly raised my eyebrow a bit. As mentioned before, use what works for you. I just wanted to report my findings over my new setup. I had some hesitancies but they've all been pretty much curbed since I finally stopped procrastinating and switched things up to see how they'd work.