Thomas

I'm not trying to be cranky, but without knowing the shape of the house the square footage is meaningless. How far would the cable runs be for each camera individually? Can they be run in a straight line, if they curve how much length will it add?

You say covering X number of feet, but how far away from the system will they be?

A few things first. BIOS's do not need to be updated when moving to SP2. Windows doesn't see the BIOS except as it is translated through the HAL layer. Windows doesn't see alot of the hardware aspects of anything, it's pretty much abstracted to the windows kernal. Second, SP2 does do a driver check, but if the drivers you have installed are more current then the ones windows has, then it will just ignore them. It doesn't require a forced reinstall of the drivers. And the drivers MS bundles into Windows are almost always the OEM drivers availible at the time of the OS (Not the SP) release. There are a few exceptions for things like mice and monitor drivers. The program compatibility is the worst headache for the end user, but alot of it comes from sloppy code on the vendor side. But any service pack is going to break something. As annoying as SP2 can be, it's no where near as bad as any of the SP's for NT4. I'm sorry to hear about your problems DVR_Expert....but we've been spared. We've had a few people who's MSDE was broken but that's been the limit of our headache with SP2.

What are you going to spending on cameras?

I'm trying to make sure I understand this concept. When looking at the s/n ratio (as expressed in Db) the higher the number is, the better the camera is?

STAM looks like it might be just the thing.

Can anyone recomend good training referances? I've read a few of the books but I'd like to do a course. I'm not really looking to do installs, but being able to troubleshoot them. Ideally in the Houston Area or Online....

It's not the DVR, the same problems existed on a previous set up. I'm going to talk to the installer today, try to get some more info on those cameras.

http://www.video-insight.com/RearStairsBlueLight.bmp I'm trying to diagnose this blue static...but I'm clueless here. Any ideas?

Quake works perfectly well in Linux, as does Quake 2, Quake 3, I suspect Quake 4 will as well. ID has been pretty supportive of Linux gaming. Most FPS work well in Linux. You just need the Linux binaries which usually are on the CD.

My question doesn't have anything to do with CCTV, but I was hoping some of the people with installing experance can help. I live in an apartment, and when they did the cable tv wiring, they managed to clip the cable to our apartment. Normally it's not much of a problem, but if the signal is split at all, we loose the higher channels on digital cable. And as it stands now, we lose the pay-per-view channels when we watch them. Time-Warner isn't going to do anything about the cable itself. Is there anything I can do to try to boost the signal?

Don't know/Don't know And no. I didn't do the install, one of our resellers did. I'm trying to help him out. I'll get that info from him, is there anything else that would be helpful to know?

The apartments are actully really nice. The cable guy showed me what the trunk was getting, he showed me what my neighbors are getting, and then what I'm getting. The problem is definitly in the cable from the trunk to our apartment. While they do have an obilgation to be helpful, the state of texas doesn't require them to spend what it would cost for what really is a luxury. Not much of a legal requirement to repair when there are alturnitives. They've been pretty nice about it, and the got three bids for what it would take to fix it and I can understand not wanting spend that kind of money.

The problem is that I can't force it to be fixed. I lease my apartment and I can't just have someone fix it. The cable company won't do it without the apartment complex'a consent. They won't allow it until it's unusable.

It techincally is a bit further away. If we assume a point 10 ft away is our focal point then..... 12 ft= 12 2 + 10 2 = C 2 144 + 100 = C 2 244 = C 2 C = 15.62 ft... 18 ft = 18 2 + 10 2 = C 2 324 + 100 = C 2 424 = C 2 20.591 ft. The higher you make the camera, or the further the focal point the greater this forumla grows. And who says you never use algebra in the real world.[/code]

So the adaptor rings don't alter focal length?

And how does C/CS fit in with all of this?

Even with hardware compression you could get maybe two and they would look like crap.

USB doesn't have enough bandwith for more then a few cameras.

Not without some major work on my part. Like rebuilding the mobo's for them. No PCI slots.

It just turns on the firewall in Windows. The pop blocker sucks but I'm spoiled by Mozilla.

The IP camera server is comming along nicely. Right now it supports Axis cameras and the programers are working on some more. I've got the beta on my desk and it runs well. And Rory, one project we've been working on is a WinXP embeded based version of the software, would that count?

Actully it's closer to 18 Mb/s for uncompressived video. CCTV doesn't need to use the closed captioning section of the signal, ect. And keep in mind that communcation types work in powers of ten rather then binary.

I've noticed that manufacture's specs are pretty vauge. A number I've seen will list horizontal lines and others will list vertical lines.

And bandwith isn't the only issue. Latency is a major factor in frame rates. Bandwith is the amount of data you can send, latency is how long it takes to get there. The most bandwith possible is a cargo ship full of 400 gb hard drives. But the latency on that sucks. Now if your business has business class broadband, your limiting factor is more likely to be your home system. Cable: Variable up and down depending on how many users are on the cable systems local network. If you are the only user for 50 miles great, densely populated urban area, less great. latency is a factor of the other users on the cable network. DSL: Variable up and down based on distance from CO (telephone office). Unlike cable it tends to be more stable on it's speeds and more consistant in latency. Satilite: Is unsuitable for any kind of DVR work as a general rule. Upload bandwith is slightly faster then dial up, but you have a painful latency. Keep in mind, that you have to send a signal up, then back down, then to the ISP, then onto the net. This takes a little bit of time. Dial up: Poor upload, poor latancy. T-1: Expensive but excellent bandwith, but the major kicker is the low latancy. There are some other broadband options but things like an OCR-3 is overkill for most users. There is also a differance between consumer class and business class broadband. Business class users need things like low latency for VPN's.