Like many first time posters have mentioned - I too have been lurking for a while trying to take in as much knowledge as I can. A wealth of info so thanks thus far! I'm at a bit of a stumbling block due to a fundamental question since I've got such little experience so I thought I'd tee it up to the community.
Here's the background:
I've got two rooms that I want to have cameras on - have 1 today and am adding the 2nd. I'll end up having a third for messing around with as a result of having an extra from another project. The current setup with the single camera is for live viewing only - we don't record anything. It's an unusual setup and probably rudimentary by comparison to the designs I've read on here but works pretty damn well - we have the camera plugged into a Slingbox and that is either feeding the TV or our smartphones. Video quality is shockingly good since it's a HD capable Slingbox. Adding the 2nd room is where the complexity comes in. My Slingbox device can't handle a 2nd feed so I figured a DVR is the way to go and just get rid of the Slingbox. I picked up an inexpensive ($80) 4 channel DVR but the display video quality was terrible. So then the search began and here I am.
The challenge:
Since recording isn't needed - but a really nice perk if I get it - do we even need a DVR and if not, what do folks use for multi-camera use without recording?
I quickly learned "you get what you pay for" but my assumption was if the codecs advertised were the same then the video quality should be decent or similar. Wow, was I wrong.... damn that thing was bad. It was Night Owl brand. My wife is not techy and she was commenting how poor the video quality was on the existing camera moving from Slingbox to the DVR.
The cameras use EFFIO-P DSP's, rated at 700TVL, and the pixel rating is 976x582 for PAL and 976x494 for NTSC. BNC is the output.
Thoughts? To DVR or not to DVR? Thanks in advance for the comments!
