SunnyKim

Scooterguy, 16 Ch IP system could be expensive choice for your application. You may go for fairly cheap HD-SDI, or CVI, or TVI, or AHD cameras and stand alone 16 Ch HD DVR. If the stand alone DVR is expensive, then you may go for 960H System (analog cameras and 16 Ch 960H stand alone DVR). As 960H system is as new as HD system, the video quality of 960H system gets much better than that of the old CIF or D1 quality system.

Old days, most DVR was limited to CIF (240HX352Wx30FPS), even though camera sends VGA quality video. So the quality might be bad when you now watch and compare to that of HD (IP or HD-CVI or HD-TVI,etc). You have to buy new cameras and DVRs or NVRs for HD quality. That boosts our economy. But you can also buy the 4 sets of 16 Ch DVR (D1 or 960H) for your cameras already installed.

From the picture, I could guess that the card would be for 16 Ch analog cameras. The manufacturer of the card is supposed to provide the device driver who might be gone under, I guess. You may buy a new one. New cards would support up to Windows 8 or so and 64 bit OS, and remote accesses from smart phones.

I think all the PC based DVR makers are gone away, except a few. Therefore, no supports can be provided for your old card. You may have to buy a new card, claiming 960H. That could be the most recent card.

I do not understand NVR costs u$500 more than the standalone DVR. Why??. NVR is for IP camera, only decompress and display the incoming compressed video files for spot monitoring. But standalone DVR does everything, including compression for incoming video data in format of HD-SDI, HD_CVI,HD TVI, HD-AHD. Those cameras are cheaper than IP Cameras. You dont need POE equipment for NVR. Anybody can explain whys??

That's for 720P camera system and it needs 720P TVI cameras from Hilkvision. Am I right?

To be precise, there should be No 960H term in Camera side. All analog cameras send its captured video in the format of TV signal. The receiving side, say DVR, can carry the term, 960H. It is sampled at the video decoder inside the DVR. Old video decoders were limited to 720H, D1 sampling. In stead, Analog Cameras are termed as TVL. The TVL numbered above "650" can be enough for sampling and generating 960 horizontal pixels per line.

Do not hope such connection would create the video quality. TV Tuner or Receiver or TV set do not improve image quality of NTSC/PAL -TV signal. It just process the signal, aiming to reproduce the original video image, as best as possible. The DVR becomes the source of original video image such connection.

Yes, it is normal. Let me explain as below. Analog camera sends a TV signal. The signal is decoded into a digital video data, by so called video decoder, before being displayed. TV normally uses a better and expensive video decoder but DVR does not (may not able to afford a good/expensive one).

If budget is limited and for a home application, you can look at "analog systems". The standalone 960H 4 Ch DVRs or PC capture card can be recommended. All of these support remote access from smart phone. HD systems could cost you more, in most cases.

Under a limited budget, you only need to buy analog 16 Ch standalone DVR, as you are satisfied with current analog video cameras. Any brands of Korean/Taiwan manufacturers or HikVision or Daihua would be very fine. If you have some cameras running over 900 feet, all other solutions may put you in trouble.

One question, gentlemen. From my curiosity, how do you guys handle against lightening and thunder? The induced current would be extremely high over a thin -long RS-485 line, damaging all electronic devices attached to it.

Apology that I misunderstood your question. I do not have seen any standalone DVR can let a full access from remote. PC based DVR based on a video capture card could be the solution, as long as you can access to it from remote. With a teamviewer like soft wares, you can have a full control over the PC based DVR. If you can hack into the PC, there would be no need to attach a monitor.

Turais, It is pretty much old card. It seems Hikvision already dropped it on their product list. You better check Hikvision for the updated software.

Connect your DVR to the network. Then let DVR stream out compressed file to network. The rest is on you from there.

Can you show the picture of the pci card? How much you paid for it?

Video decoder sits inside the DVR box. And you can not build your own. The DVR carrying TW2866 should be OK upto 700 feet over a rg59, solid copper cable. Their market share is around 50%. So the chances are 50% that you can hit into a good DVR box. FYI, our video decoder can receive signals over 1500 feet-cable length. But we do not have any dvr products, yet to be introduced in the market. Someday soon, we will promote ours built with our own video decoders and back end compression codec.

You got misunderstood. HD-SDI encoder does send video data captured by HD-SDI camera, in the format of digital video, not compressed, raw video. So compression and storage can be made at DVR box or HD PC capture card (with HW compression capability) on PC. Milestone, and other software developers deal mainly with IP cameras which compress the video at the camera side, sending the compressed bit streams over internet cable to the remote PC. These softwares do storing the compressed files, and de-compressing the compressed files , and displaying the decompressed video on the PC monitor.

As to analog cameras, 700 feet seems not a big deal. FYI, we designed video decoder that converts analog TV signal into digital video data feeding into the back end compression CoDec. In our lab, we tested the long distance performance for the front end video decoders. Techwell's TW2866 can capture the video data without problem at such a distance over rg59. But other video decoders (like nextchip) did fail out. So chances could be 50 and 50, depending on DVR. So you buy a DVR and put it under test before you bury the cable.

Radar, To me it does not seem to be related to HDD. More or less it could be to the capacity of CoDec engine in the DVR box. The size of 960H is 33 % more than D1. So needed that much CoDec power. FYI, Very good quality of 960H can be recorded with 2 Megabit Per Second. For 16 Ch, it could be less than 32 Mbps. In terms of Byte, less than 4 MBPS. In general, HDD can handle around 60MBPS for traffic of read &write, easily.

You could be right. But I remember that only several years ago, CIF video have been a main stream for CCTV. But I remember those days Many of us had shouted out " a digital revolution". But now we are getting used to video quality of Full HD1080P. As long as it can catch a rat, it does not matter, whether expensive white cats or cheap unbranded black cats, at least to me. That is not my word. It's Deng ShaoPing who turned China into who she is.

Hi, Roman and All USB2.0 standard allows max 480 Mega bit Per second. Converted to Bytes, only 60 Mega Bytes. For stable operation, including delay from system interrupts, around 30 Mega Bytes Per Second could be max bandwidth for USB capture card. In terms of video data, One channel of D1 sized video at 30 FPS and audio can go through over USB interface. Please be noted. There are 2 kinds of USB capture card in the market. The first kind that you showed carries one channel video decoder from old Philips and a USB controller chipset from Somagic. Due to cheap and less components, the solution can go less than U$10 with a small PCB board, shown as thin and small main body of the product. The philips decoder (officially EOLed but its generic can be still on the market) can take in 4 camera for its channel switching capability. When switched, the effective frame rate per each channel go as low as 1 or 2 frames per second. But used for 1 channel camera, it can provide D1 at 30 FPS, in case NTSC. So good for video editing for an OLD VCR tape. But not good for security applications due to low frame rate for multi-channel. I am quite amazed to see the price tag of such kind could be at less $10. Let me tell you that there are many cheaters in the internet. Some are selling that kind at U$50 and above while some others selling it at U$5. High price does not always get you Better quality. And such a low price can be used as Bait, as well. The second kind that you showed carries mostly a 4 Channel Video Decoder (Max 8 Channels when switched at 15FPS(NTSC) or 12.5FPS (PAL)), an FPGA chipset, and a USB controller. So the PCB becomes larger with main body frame as you showed. Due to a rather expensive FPGA chip set, the price of the 2nd kinds product can not go less than U$24, I guess. One of the 2nd kinds is carrying our video decoder (4 Ch CIF at 30FPS each or 8Ch CIF at 15 FPS when switched for NTSC) and a USB controller from Somagic. Our decoder does not need a rather expensive FPGA chipset and does interface the USB controller directly. So its price can go less that U$20. I can bet ours will show the best video quality. But to be honest I do not have any idea that which product carries our chip set. We sell our video decoder only to one Chinese system makers and No idea how many internet vendors that it deals with. But if you buy a lot, I can introduce you to the company.

Alexj You can find our solution in the thread viewtopic.php?f=15&t=43751 We are looking for NVR software developers and partners for marketing.

Each camera would generate at least 8 Megabits Per Second. Considering buffering delay, it could count as 20 Megabits per second for each camera. There would be bottlenecks for network link and switches, HDD read write for dealing 74 cameras. How many PCs to be employed for play back spot monitoring?

My apology. I just overlooked his title. I just thought as he could have endured with BW cameras. New 960H could be his next best choice, I guess.