Hi guys. I'm new here, and I know most folks are probably into the higher end tech for this stuff but I just wanted to share my experience trying to get real-time viewing of my new DVR setup over the network in Linux.
I bought the the Aposonic A-BR1B4-C250 kit from Newegg, which features the A-S0401R1 DVR. What's interesting, and frustrating, is that although it runs embedded Linux 2.6, it REQUIRES Internet Explorer with ActiveX to view the camera feeds in real time on the device's webterface. I downloaded the suggested Android app for this thing, and realized it can view live feeds, albeit undersampled and a little delayed, without IE, ActiveX, or any other Microsoft involvement.
The DVR runs a telnet server which you can log into and have complete access to the filesystem. I don't suggest doing this without being familiar with Linux, because the default, and only, login is 'root', which for the uninformed is the superuser that can do anything to the system at will, including but not limited to the deletion of crucial files.
Anyway, while poking around the filesystem, I found the area where the server holds it's served documents for the webserver, which also happens to be the same content served to the Android and iPhone apps. Loading up each of the URLs, I stumbled upon a non-ActiveX viewer for the cameras.
That URL is:
http://x.x.x.x/GetData.cgi?CH=1&Size=D1
x.x.x.x is the IP of your DVR.
CH=1 can be CH=2, CH=3, or CH=4 depending on which feed you would like to view.
Size=D1 can be QCIF, CIF, VGA, or D1
So put together the right URL in your browser and you're greeted with a login prompt. This is the same login/pw as your DVR, which you set up when you first turned it on. After logging in, you're looking at a feed from the DVR of whichever cam channel you've chosen. I bookmark this page for future use.
Now, this is cool, but I want to see all 4 cams at the same time, and I want it to be convenient. In that case, if you use Google Chrome as your browser, you can install the extension called CCTV View, and load up all 4 camera URLs into it. It has a preview button as well as a full web monitor page.
That's it! I hope this helps a few people. You don't get ALL of the functionality of the ActiveX driven interface, but you do get an awful lot more than the alternative (which is nothing).
EDIT: I forgot to mention, there are a number of other interesting URLs available. If you want to look at stills of each camera one at a time, you can go to:
http://x.x.x.x/channel1.html
Similarly, to get stills from each cam, such as to make a custom html page with still shots, you can load:
http://x.x.x.x/GetJPG.cgi?CH=01&Size=D1
Where the parameters are identical to the GetData URL.
EDIT2:
I'm fairly convinced this stuff will work for other Aposonic DVRs, and probably any other that runs embedded Linux. For the savy, the internal webserver root directory is:
/GMHDVR/bin/resource/www