Thomas

I didn't realize I had more then one reseller here. Eh, it's tough being a Yankee in an office full of southerners but someone needs to remind them of thier place.

That's a straw man. You're in the same boat if the software developers do the same with the hardware card.

But hardware locks you into one codec. When something better comes along you won't be able to move toward it.

Yes. Stop thinking of this as a security project. It's not. It's an AV project. The simplest and best way to do this is record the video and webcast it using windows media server.

There will always be some differance between what you see on the screen and what you see on a TV. You will always have some degree of artifacting on the PC screen due to the compression methods used. Almost all video compression looses some quality on compression. Video Codecs that are closer to lossless have the large downside of file size. i.e. You almost get what you see on the TV but it takes 10 GB to store one day's worth of video per camera.

Nope you didn't break any forum guidelines or rules of ettiquette, I think you have just run into something that people may not have tried. With that kind of set up, I would be really, really worried about heat issues.

My advice is point out that the two bits of advice are not compatable. Then I would recomend having the IT consultant select and build the DVR. (Okay, that last part is spiteful on my part but I hate people who belive that one tool is all you need in a tool kit. ) This removes your responcability for the DVR, and I think you may want that. I would just worry about the cameras.

It is not unthinkable. Porting applications like this to Linux isn't trival. There are alot of design issues beyond just code rewrites. If I don't open source the code, how do I deliver it? RPMs are great for some distros but won't work for others the same with Deb files. The only universal install is a source code compile but if I'm not putting my source code under a GPL/BSD/MPL/etc licence then I'm just giving other companies a free look. And don't even start on the tech support issues that differant distros run into.

It's not a question that you can give an easy answer for. As far as I know there are no zero-day (non-reported, but existing in hacker/script kiddie communities) exploits for any verison of Geovision. It doesn't mean they might not exist, and it doesn't mean they do exist, it just means that none are known right now. There are no known zero-day exploits for the various Linksys firmwares. But again, that just means we don't know if they exist. The network security rule of thumb is that paranoia is the rule. The only secure computer is one with no inputs, encased in a block of concret and dumped into the ocean.

It can a little bit but not really. If I see an open port on 8080, 80 to 90 I would probley assume it was a webserver. Changing the ports protects you from really badly writen automated attacks but if a human enters the loop at some point it won't help much. But did you put the address like this http://address:portnumber http://127.0.0.1:82

Yep. If you get a camera bad enough it can take out the other cameras on the chip. The general rule of thumb I found was look for the camera that looks perfect out of the four. It's going to be your trouble maker quite often.

Given that Pricewatch has no way to monitor the transactions, and given that the feedback can be faked the number of stars a retailer has on there has no meaning for me. Too many fly-by-night companies. I know people who ment to purchace OEM copies of Windows and ended up with fakes via companies posted on Pricewatch. But with security systems, you should do more leg work. This is a system that protects your home/business/loved ones and it needs to be something you can trust. I don't care very much if my gaming machine goes down. I have spares for all of the parts and I won't have much downtime. I would care if my DVR went out. Add to it the cameras and you are talking about a rather complex system with multiple failure points. Putting together a camera system isn't something you just do without research. It's like buying random parts for a PC without doing research. You might get something that works. But if you don't know what PCI, PCI-E, PCI-X, and AGP mean it could make buying a graphics card painful. It's why places like Best Buy exist. As far as trying to keep a list of pirated card sites...it would be outdated before I posted it. Places like that change on a regular basis. And it's not just Geovision. Avermedia and Kodicom have simular issues. It's simply too much information for a small team of volunteers to keep up with. We're not talking about a group of ten people doing this. We're talking about literally thousands of groups. I've seen industry estimates that half of the cards on E-bay alone are fakes. The industry estimates are that there are over 15,000 dealers world wide trading in pirated cards and software. Security equipment is a six billion dollar industry. The pirated market is closer to two hundred million dollars. That's alot of $100 cards. Given that they have the backing of China, (where the cards are made) who chooses not to enforce certain treaties they have signed, you won't be able to shut down the flow of cards. We're talking about part of a larger global problem. When you say that the list will keep pricing down, you assume a that you are dealing with a comodity item. Given the amount of after support required for some customers, there is a tech support back end that has to go with it. You seem to think this list would be a trival thing. But do a Google search for Geovision dealer. I get 43,000 hits or so. Changing searches around should get you closer to 60,000 or so. And that's just Geovision. Avermedia has a problem with piracy, kodicom has a problem with piracy....the list goes on. This isn't a tiny list.

We do not allow the trading of keycodes on this board. I would suggest looking harder for your reseller.

It's not shrouded in secrecy, it's just that this forum doesn't deal with it. If you want the lowest price then google will help you find it. As far as certain vendors, if you ask here people have experance with them. You can post pictures from thier site to check legitamacy. We're not standing in your way, we just have legitmate reasons to not post price. You bring up pricewatch.com. I would never, ever send anyone there. There are tons of rip off artists on it. And while you can get a good price that may be a few dollars cheaper, you run much greater risks of getting ripped off. But imagine the problem if we did allow posts with lower pricing. How long would it be before those sites flooded this place with posts about pricing? Rory, I and Larry are three differant people. And we all represent the differant groups here. Larry is an end user. Rory is an installer, I work for a manufacter but we're all unpaid people to moderate on our free time. We don't have time to check the IP of every post. The signal to noise ratio here is good. And this site is extremely rare in that it mixes installers, end users and manufacturers in one place. It's not just rare in this industry but any industry. I feel it's worth you haveing do your own leg work for pricing.

Geovision has a section on thier website about spotting fakes. As far as bringing the BSA into play....it depends on if the card is fake or not. If it's a real geovision card and the seller just doesn't want to upgrade it then come back here and one of the geovision dealers may be able to help you (note I am not promising you they will or they have to, some just tend to be helpful about such things). Keep this in mind the next time someone tells you "piracy doesn't hurt anyone". It does and it works it's way down to the end user in the form of forced hardware upgrades/dongles and other annoyances.

No, it's a balancing act. There are three groups that are represented here: 1. End users 2. Dealers 3. Manufacturers. The MSRP policy is a balancing act between all three groups. If below MSRP is posted then it makes it tough for dealers to make a living. What incentive does that leave the dealers here to be helpful? I've spoken with dealers to which this has happened to. Thier feeling was that "You aren't helping me make money on equipment and now you want my labor/advice for free too?" At the same time consumers don't want to be ripped off. So some pricing has to be posted. Manufacturers set prices so that they and their channels can make money. The MSRP is part of that. In the end the MSRP is a balanced price. If you get it less then that, great you got a deal. If you paid 2x it then you got ripped off. But that's the theory, here is the pratice. Geovision has a piracy problem. If we set up an index of "geovision" prices, the pirated cards would skew it. Rory and I don't have time to check. We are both unpaid volunteers. Our time is limited. Ask the Dealers how far I can get behind for dealer section access. (I'm going to throw out a warning now. Keep this discussion civil. I mean this for both dealers and end users. I can see this becoming a flame war quickly.)

There is a way to report it. The BSA will handle it in the US. But the problem isn't the US end. It's the China end. There are a ton of factories in China producing knockoff cards. China was a signer of the Berne convention but they don't enforce it. From a company stand point, I wouldn't deal with China simply because of the threat of a conspiracy lawsuit (ie you knew the cards were illegal and sold them anyway, it's tough to prove innocence on it).

It would be a violation of forum rules. Please note that prices under MSRP would be deleted.

You have some variables in there. I can try to speak to some of the questions. 1. Futureproofing. Software based systems will have the advantage. DSPs aren't like CPUs. DSPs can do certain things much faster then CPUs but all they can do is that one thing. Reprogramable FPGA exsist but aren't practical for something like this. The MPEG variant that the card uses is the only one it will ever use. 2. Reliability This one is a push. It all comes down to the software rather then heat produced. Assuming you don't do anything truely foolish, it will be software that is 90% of your issues.

I've seen simular systems in action. So I will repeat my comment: Trash. Those systems have a high failure rate. Add into it the problem of interferance on wireless systems and you end up with something that just doesn't work. So if is going to be down more then 30% of the time I would consider it a waste of money. It is cheap but that doesn't make it "good value for the money" it's more of a "when what ever you were protecting gets stolen and you have no video because it didn't work now you lost the items and you're out 150 pounds on the video system as well" kind of situation.

Trash.

I belive I can solve your issue without any more equipment. Log into the Modem/router and put it into bridged mode. (Search google for the model number) and then try to work with the linksys router.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pelco-ptz Does Pelco P. And there some apps in linux that will do it. But basicly you just need to send the commands out the serial port. A bash script can do it.

Don't cut corners. If the system isn't worth the money it costs to do it right then your need isn't really there.

This probley isn't going to work out the way you hoped but lets see if we can narrow this down. 1. How good of a programer are you? Good UI design isn't easy. 2. Are you looking to sell to end users or dealers? 3. Are you going to put in the support staff to handle it?