inaninstant

Hello everyone, I've been doing quite a bit of research and this forum has been extremely helpful but I'd like to just throw everything on the table and provide you with as much info as I can, the hope being that maybe you can steer me in the right direction. There have been about 4 times where I was dead positive which route I was taking and I keep getting jammed up with the bazillion choices out there. 1. I'd like to go with an NVR based system capable of 1080p. 2. The cameras need to be capable of operation down to -15° F, as we are up in the Pocono, PA area. < this is a big one, I've had a hard time finding cams that rate down to this low of a temp. 3. I believe I'd like to start out with 4 cameras. I could use 6 or even 8, but I'd rather allocate more funds into the quality of the cameras. 4. My total budget is $2,500. I'm a software engineer and have ran cat5 myself in every house we've owned. We've also built a handful of desktops and LAMP based file/app servers over the years. I mention all of this because I'd like to install & configure the system myself to once more allocate as much as possible into the quality of the components. 5. While I do consider myself fairly tech. savvy and subscribe to the DIY if you can without blowing yourself up mentality, being totally new to these technologies has me leaning towards more of a boxed kit that. 6. If possible, I'd like to run Blue Iris but I'm ok if the particular DVR unit must use proprietary software. Again, I'm not totally opposed to building maybe an micro-atx i5/i7 based machine and running blue iris if that truly is the best route given my goals. 7. I've got a 60" plasma that I hope to use as the primary monitoring screen. Having all streams viewable at all times is critical. 8. From an IR standpoint, I'd need about 100' of coverage at night, that said we do have motion sensing flood-lights on 3 of 4 sides of our home so I'm not sure how significantly, if at all, that would come into play. I also want to store a few weeks worth of footage in addition to having the system auto detect/record/notify motion. 9. From an initial coverage standpoint, I'd like to able to see nearly the entire home's perimeter with the initial 4 (or 5 if needed) cameras. Ok, those are the high-level points that I can think of. I've also taken a few shots of our home and mocked up where I'm thinking of mounting either bullet or dome (preferred) style cameras. Again being new to this, please call me out if the positioning and intended coverage direction is crap or unrealistic. Front Door Front Left Front Right Back left (I know I'd be missing this side of the house, if it's just not possible to cover the perimeter of the home with 4, I might pick up a 5th camera) Back Right What would you recommend assuming I have a cap of $2,500. Thanks a TON in advance for any advice you can provide!

I noticed there are 4mm, 6mm, and 12mm optional lenses but I can't find a single instance where the camera is configurable for the initial lens upon purchase. Is this something that you must do after the fact and if so, is there somewhat of a lens portal out there where I can pick up a 6mm and 12mm to test out on one of the cams?

Thanks a ton for all the advice. It looks like alexpress has the Hik 2032 for $87 and they do seem to cover all the priorities for me and are rated all the way down to -22 °F which rocks. Maybe these hik 2032s serve as my broad, general use cameras and I go with something else for the detailed door/driveway cams like you suggested. I think I'll build an i7 based box. For the encoding/decoding I can see it eating up the processor but would I need to worry about getting a high-end video card to handle displaying the grid of streams or would an onboard gpu cover it? Thanks again!