rory

encoders kill the quality, only comparison should be a composite signal .. not an encoded and then decoded axis one .. which would explain the terrible images ive been seeing here comparing regular CCTV cameras to Megapixel ones. That or they dont realize they have to focus the cameras

Err. .. unless all your clients are rich with amazing bandwidth and have a ton of light .. i disagree

While he is at it, a shot of a properly focused pano, or least one captured on a decent DVR.

I have no trouble with the shield, though maybe its the way I do it. I can agree it is not 100%, but neither is a BNC connection. In fact I figure there is less quality loss this way over using a connector, Ive just never had a problem, always great quality and no issues. As for putting the connection, well depends on the job. I should have specified it more clearly as being in a difficult place, not somewhere one cant get to 100%, but very difficult at times, especially when its 100 degrees outside and much more in a tight attic at a long distance from attic entrance to the camera location. Its that or let the connection hang down, or put it in a box but find most clients dont want to either, especially in a business. Not sure what you mean by F connectors, but if its the cat Tv type then yup I would never trust one of those.

I gotta disagree ... I have them in the field for a decade now .. I dont LIKE to do it though .. but they do work. but using a connector inline, I just dont feel it is good enough, BNC connections can come loose, especially if you are pushing that connection back up into a ceiling you have no access to. Been there before with BNC connections. A twist here, a push there, and bingo the connector can come loose. If its easy to access then sure, connector all the way. Only thing is I HATE electric tape .. no matter which method. I guess the proper way would be to use heat shrink tubing and go all out but you know how it goes .. if one is splicing a connection then most likely its fixing someone elses mistake .. and the client isnt paying good most times.

Thank you for the great info Dongwon

Thanks .. yeah thats a great amount of IR .. will check out the model you named. Regarding the cameras Im on the search for low light BW MP, the ones Im looking to replace are a mix of BW standard and BW exview, the exview we use the most of (night clubs), if I can match the same low light we get now in any kind of higher res then I would get them to buy it .. basically no IR just low light BW .. thats just for one client I mean .. others can ofcourse add IR. Ill have to keep my eye on mobotix .. any ideas how they perform without the IR? thanks.

Thanks, but i was talking about low light images .. not with IR Additionally I might add that the Panasonic WDR domes and Box cameras are not considered very low light even though they are Day Night, their specs are not great for that. Better cameras for low light would be either straight up BW or Day Night Exview, eg. 0.01 lux where Pano is 0.06 lux. PS. what kind of IR are you using that is lighting it up all over the place and way down the back like its a dusk to dawn light up there? Also, the top picture looks better

Do you have any comparisons? I havent seen a decent low light BW image from a MP camera yet, but maybe im missing something??

Going by what you posted, I took it that they were talking about their entire line of DOMES, which is what I replied about. Ive dealt with enough suppliers to know how most of them they go, in most cases this is just a job to them, selling CCTV today, Working at MacDonalds tomorrow. Additionally your account of what they said does not help their case. But like you said, I dont know them therefor it cannot be personal. Really, it doesnt even matter. Ofcourse to sell something a supplier will tell you it is better then something else (whether it is or not), they all do that. That said, I might try a Wonwoo now. ps. LOL @ pretty crappy

I just googled Wonwoo and found a vandal dome online for what seems to be well below retail, in fact the price is around the same as CNB.

Well sounds like they still dont have a clue about CNB, there are many types of CNB domes. Im sure for example, Wonwoo does not have an "eclipse" dome. Sorry, but Im just fed up with the stupid suppliers in this industry that dont know crap about anything, so I will call it like it is when I see it.

And IP67 is a bad thing? I respectfully disagree with your, Rory. The build quality of the latest Wonwoo vs the latest CNB camera sells Wonwoo to me. Picture quality between the two is close (I do slightly prefer the picture quality of the Wonwoo over the latest CNB after checking out both), but the way everything is put together on the Wonwoo justifies the minor price difference, which is important when you have customers 500 miles in every direction. No it is not a bad thing, thats why I was pointing it out! What are you disagreeing with exactly, that CNB makes IR Bullets and Wonwoo does not? That CNB has a HUGE line of domes of every type, and Wonwoo does not? My point was that any distributor worth talking to should know that Wonwoo is not a replacement for CNB. Please help me understand, thanks

Tell your supplier they are full of crap and they should perhaps go back to baking cakes. Wonwoo is hardly an equivilant to CNB. CNB have IR Bullets which Wonwoo do not. CNB have an amazing line of various Dome cameras which Wonwoo do not come close to. And from what it sounds like CNB is also less expensive. I am not saying Wonwoo do not have good products, but it is not a CNB equivalent. Additionally Wonwoo has the Rapport CCTV tester!! And the few vandal domes they do have, claim IP67 waterproof while CNBs claim IP66. So tell them go get you some CNB and stop playing!!

Windows 7 and IE8, oh my I have a headache just thinking about using those

Kool .. though that 4cif camera looks out of focus

yeah not related to IP cams in particular, and not related to Exacq , but i have an app viewing 49 cameras in one screen, just live display, mixed Geo DVRs, axis cams, and Acti cams ... fine on my P4 3.0Ghz .. even better on a core 2 duo 3.0Ghz i-mac. On a 600Mhz Celeron netbook with 2GB of RAM it is slower, switching from small window to larger window is slower, like it is slow drawing everything, though not unbearable. Also on a really old 2.12 Pentium with 224MB of ram and a poor display adapter, it is even slower ..to the point that it almost hangs as it is switched between the windows, literally could be unbearable. On the 2.12 it is obviously lacking CPU and RAM, probably also has a dying 5400rpm hard drive it is trying to page to .. but bottom line is when i view only 16 cameras, still connected to 49 cameras but hidden from the display, it is fast on both. While viewing all 49 cameras the CPU usage on the netbook runs around 80%, on my P4 3.0ghz, only around 10%, even less on the Core 2 Duo 3.0ghz. Dont know if this helps you any as Exacq will obviously be different, but thought I would throw it out there anyway.

Seems like an awful lot of money for a car park BUT appreciate the comparison

I cant find the manufacturer website right now .. will keep checking ... i found it before .. maybe even from a link on this forum.

Yes, the photos on XTS websites are not correct .. notice the photo pending stuff .. its the same exact unit, ive been to the manufacturers website. Basically XTS is a distributor in florida, like most in Florida they bring stuff in from asia to sell to latin america (which they also define the Caribbean as ) at the lowest price they can, along with that their websites are not always up to par Looks similar to the unit I used. Remember its basically the same unit, just without HDMI (I dont recall right now if the buttons and jog dial were in the same place as its been a couple months) .. the guts might also differ a little. And ofcourse the one i used was missing the HDMI Dual Streams ... with dual stream networked DVRs the recording is separate from the webserver or video server* ... basically whatever the source is set to (by factory or as in the case of a PC based a user can also change that), it can stream at that or less, depending on the DVR settings and capabilities, and also the user can normally change the compression etc. Recording has no play in it. It has a separate server just to handle the remote video. The recording quality and size is only for recording. Especially with these DVRs, you would notice the high quality live video even moreso when using HDMI, while when you set the recording to CIF the live video does not change. The webserver or video server* works with the live video, not the recorded video. *can differ from one DVR to the next

Regarding hot temps .. i reluctantly put an Avermedia 1304net inside a utility room at the bottom of a big building, a place where it was soo hot that if in there for a minute in the summer you would be pooring with sweat .. but the thing just keeps on ticking .. 2 years later .. now there was an issue where the HDD went but they had it replaced .. Id think if anything that would be the thing to go .. so another thought is using Solid State drive .. but then they are still expensive for the equivalent in a HDD. Anyway my 2 cents

Are you 100% certain they are streaming the video at CIF? I dont mean the size of the video that you see, I mean the actual video. It could be 4 Cif but resized to smaller sizes, and heavily compressed. Additionally it could be D1 or 4 cif but have bandwidth and bitrates set to much lower, and be compressed more with their H.264 for faster video. Thats not the CIF you get on the recorded video anyway, which is my main concern. It doesnt look too bad though, but it is still rather blurry. Blocky is what the recorded CIF video was, remember, I never tested the remote video. Whether the Recorded CIF video is as bad on their advanced unit or not, unsure as I guess I had the middle of the line one, and before HDMI, but it was bad on the slim line one which was the latest, BUT is the budget one. Now when i say bad, yes you can see people, inside .. but every little detail counts. In that case though it was also very blocky, nothing like in the remote video demo above. Recorded video is the most important part of a DVR, for evidence sharing. Unfortunately the person that bought them for us to test chose not to spend anymore on those right now, to test the newer HDMI unit, as really in past experience there has never been that much of a difference between one or the next, and remember we did test the slimline HDMI unit. Hence he will spend the money right now to test the Hikvision standalone, and one of their cards .. I would be ever greatful if you could to bite the bullet and get one of the Intellicam 16 channel non slim lines .. with HDMI .. their best one .. I mean bottom line is you cant go wrong .. and test it for us ... but also for yourself .. but we are mainly testing units to resell down here and the cost on their most advanced unit is way too much anyway, after 35-45% Customs Duty, but would have been nice to see it anyway.

Care to elaborate on the GeoVision flaws? Have you tested or compared Nuuo to GeoVision? -8.3+ being very slow, or basically requiring fast hardware. 8.12 was their last good one as far as Im concerned, yes it had bugs too, but none that are noticeable for most setups, I never encountered any. It is fast, then after that it went down hill. -Requiring .Net, installed with their IP cam setup even if not using it - yes I consider that a flaw! -Upgrading issues with older cards - seems everytime they have a major release such as 8.0, and now 8.3 ... there becomes issues for older cards to work with them. Additionally you cant use new cards that come with 8.3, with say 8.12. -No Linux Software ... okay I was never a linux fan but with XP at almost $200 and on the way out .. and Win 7 being a huge disaster ... Linux is free, Ubuntu for example can run easily on a netbook ... and is considered a full desktop OS now .. i even have MS Office installed on Ubuntu now. -Cant move cameras around on DVR screen ... eg. drag drop, unless I missed it when using the latest version. Have to manually move them. -Pigtails - I hate them .. but this is not just Geo .. still cant these manufacturers make a single BNC box? If I can design it easy enough, as I have, I am certain they could make one .. I cant make it though as I cannot find the right parts down here! What I did recently at least to make it neat was use 2 monitor cables and run them from the DVR to an alarm panel box, and the video and pigtails connect up in there. Its having that whole bundle of crap behind the DVR that vexes me. LOL One could probably put a BNC plate inside the box and use that and have it numbered properly to make it easy to remove and reconnect the BNCs .. but maybe for another Day. There are other things I cant think of right now ... but really it being so much slower now in 8.3+ and requiring much faster hardware, is most of my rant. I havent tried Nuuo .. i saw it on someone elses DVR recently but didnt have a chance to test it.

The slim line in the first link i posted is the exact same unit as the Intellicam slim line. SAme software everything down to the T. The 16 channel model i used is the older model of the same DVR intellicam has, basically all the same except without HDMI, Xts also has the HDMI versions on their site but they didnt send them. It could have been a defective model, but in D1 it was good quality. There were some other issues I had with it .. slow painting of GUI for example. see above, the unit I had was just an older one without HDMI, everything else seems the same. Could Intellicam have OEMed a better chipset, possibly, but unlikely, just looks like the newer model. Like I said, I never tried the remote software, but they claim dual stream, meaning what you see remotely is totally separate from the server's resolution and quality settings, hence you could record in CIF while live video is in D1 and the remote video can be in any quality setting you want.

If its high quality record and low quality stream, then it should be a dual stream DVR. Check if the remote software itself, or DVR's network client/webcam settings have a quality or resolution size, or a deinterlace setting. if there are no settings, then you would be stuck with what they give you.