Don Stephens

Not much at all anymore... http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products_category/hd-sdi-products-7.html

Solely based on the pittance that would cost, I'm inclined to tell you to give it a shot and let me know.

The smaller Amazon store operations generally commit to a fixed profit system regardless of the item. Making $5-$10 on something that costs $500 isn't a big deal when you consider how many people will buy it at that reduced price. These "companies" are 1-2 employees deep with practically zero overhead, especially when you consider they're just drop shipping their whole catalog. They can easily afford to price chop. They can also take advantage of the growing number of people who only shop on Amazon. There's no point of trying to compete with Amazon, eBay, or Aliexpress unless you're selling on one of those platforms. The markets are separate even though it's the same industry. HD Security Store would be a good example of this. They do great on Amazon with their low prices and targeted keywords, but their own eCommerce site does terrible in comparison to any other eCommerce store even though they have an established name in the Amazon market. Getting a quote from an installer and comparing that to Amazon pricing puts installers in the same situation. How many times has everyone heard something to the tune of, "How come you're selling me this camera for more than they are?" It should be easy enough by now to list the reason you're all better than an Amazon seller; customer support, warranties, fast and effective communication, AN ACTUAL WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT YOU'RE SELLING THEM, etc...

I just had a problem with this today. Our customer was required to get a commercial grade setup as opposed to residential for that exact reason. I don't get a lot of Hughesnet customers and I'm not real familiar with the ISP, but I've had this happen on a couple of occasions. To me, it always sounded like an excuse to get more money.

Beats the heck out of 10 pages of Hikvision and Dahua problems. +1

For which manufacturer(s)? Are those backdoor codes or the normal/default? For what it's worth, I have (only?) three cameras installed. They are all Axis. I just installed a fourth this weekend, but I haven't run the networking cable back to the PoE switch yet. My parents wanted to add one at their house and they also picked up an Axis. All but one has been bought via Amazon. If you watch, and are patient, you can get some very good deals. I paid less than $450 for the most recent one - a P3364-VE. I can't stay enough good things about their support. It's fantastic! I hope it continues that way under Canon ownership. I read this earlier: http://www.wsj.com/articles/canon-to-buy-swedens-axis-for-2-8-billion-1423554729 From the sounds of it, it will remain fairly segregated. I don't think Canon plans to meddle too much. Also, I wasn't aware that Canon and Axis had an established history.

Not to be condescending but...is it dark out?

At their website (link below) you'll see that the system should be covered by their forever policy. There is no mention of a 1 year limit on anything. https://customerservice.costco.com/system/templates/selfservice/costco_en_us/#!portal/200500000001002/article/200500000003119/Costcocom-Return-Policy "Exceptions: Televisions, projectors, computers, cameras, camcorders, touchscreen tablets, iPOD / MP3 players and cellular phones must be returned within 90 days of purchase for a refund." Does Costco actually have a lifetime return policy on everything else they sell?

I have no clue what the default ports are for Zmodo. You should be able to confirm that from your network settings in the DVR. What's your upload speed?

You'll never get the Hikvision camera to connect to PSS. Your only hope is to do it through the NVR. How far are you able to get in PSS before you hit a wall with adding the NVR?

You can't use network cable with HDSDI like you can with standard def analog cameras.

Why does it seem like the problem is with port forwarding? Have you done port forwarding? If so, are the ports open?

I've seen a few things in the past about Avigilon not being 100% transparent when it comes to their marketing, but from what I've seen and read, they're no more evil than any other company out there advertising something. I've certainly never heard anything about them not having a "working line". Re-sellers have had their feelings hurt because Avigilon has taken a different approach to selling their products. It guarantees that their product line keeps a good reputation because they try to only do business with people who have a clue what they're doing. I can't blame them for not trusting re-sellers and distributors.

I wish I had known this prior to spending about $1500 on Dahua cameras. I'm turfing my new 16ch Dahua NVR5416-16P NVR as well since I've decided to go all Hikvision. Honestly, that's the only lighting environment where Hikvision excels passed Dahua. If there is even minimal light, Hikvision loses it's edge and in some levels of low light, Dahua is actually better. Unless you have your cameras mounted in in an area with zero ambient and/or artificial light, I like Dahua better. I don't normally come across anything like this other than warehouses or factories that don't have windows and shut everything down for the night. Usually when I see them mounted in homes like yours, there's enough natural light hanging around for it not to look like crap. It's too bad you weren't as fortunate as those people.

Dahua is always terrible next to Hikvision in complete darkness. Your images are typical of any of either manufacturer's models.

This is the most confusing part of Avigilon for me. They've taken this elitist approach to selling their product line, which I have no problem with, but I don't see how it leaves them room to expand. Their marketing campaign was successful enough for people to hear about them and want what they're selling, but people are starting to get frustrated with not being able to get the product in their hands.

I never really considered mounting them at lower height like this. That is significantly more useful than I had in my head based on all of the other pictures I've seen.

From the sounds of it then, you like it for the good image it serves up at a very wide angle of view. If I'm wrong, tell me. Do you every have issues with getting peoples faces on camera if they're within closer proximity of the camera?

If you get a 16 port switch, that would take care of everything. You don't need the NVR to view your cameras but I imagine you still want something to record to. That either means a standalone NVR or a PC based NVR, unless you want your cameras recording to SD cards internally. It depends on what your end game is.

I always lean a little more towards Dahua. They have a lot of subtle things that I like better or just don't see with Hikvision. Either one is a good choice though. I don't know what to tell you about 5MP cameras. I really haven't been impressed with either company's 5MP models for their price. I'm sure someone else can chime in. Are you planning on using a dedicated PoE switch, or are you looking at NVRs that have the switch built in?

I would stay away from HDSDI if I were you. It can be very buggy if you end up with the wrong equipment, which isn't a hard thing to do with HDSDI. Stick with looking into HDCVI and HDTVI like jeromephone recommended. Security Camera Warehouse makes me nervous. I already gave my input on them in another thread (second post): viewtopic.php?f=5&t=44034&p=261915&hilit=security+camera+warehouse#p261915

Lasers.

I couldn't tell you what the default port is for that camera but the PTZ controls would go through the same port. Are you noticing dropped frames or a reduced frame rate when you're streaming video, or is the only thing affected the PTZ controls?

If we're talking about local access... It sounds like your network can't handle the traffic. If it's responding but delayed, I usually find the culprit to be an insufficient router. I've also heard claims that a less that satisfactory graphics card can cause this too, although I've never witnessed that myself. If you're getting this problem from outside your network during remote viewing, your upload speed just isn't high enough to achieve what you want.

It's really not that simple. Like everything else, including other network devices, it depends on the quality of the hardware (manufacturer); there's obviously some differences between a camera that costs $30 and one that looks the same but costs $200. It also depends on how much you maintain that hardware. There are IP cameras that burn out in a month because they're garbage, but we have IP cameras that we setup in our building around ten years ago that are still running because we took care of them. People who are too lazy/negligent to maintain their own hardware are the biggest cause of cameras going bad as far as I'm concerned. I can't even tell you the last time I saw a camera that broke down outside of its warranty where the camera was too blame.