aster1x

Which directory structure are you refering to?

First I've heard of this... do you have any details on this? In the past I saw pictures of the internal DS-760X with different power supplies manufacturer in the google. This is normal for a manufacturer to have various suppliers for such a commoditised item as the power supply.

I do not have any experience with asian dealers. I am located in Europe and I bought a DS-7604NI-SEP from a Bulgarian dealer (low VAT). I wanted to have two SATA interfaces for two disks and they could not confirm if the specific model had the two inerfaces. Beware the DS-7604NI-S(E) i.e. with no internal PoE switch and an external power supply and one LAN port has ONE SATA interface. They were confusing the models and it took me alot of communications to make them undestand the differences in models and the one I wanted. Until they deleivered and I opened the case to see the two interfaces I was very uneasy. The problem starts from the HIK manufacturer who does not have a clear model numbering convention, the lack of distributors support and training even the ones that are indicated in the HIK site. Even their firmware and software support is confusing. The latest camera firmware 5.2.0 appears only in the US FTP site with username and password which can be found from other users in the forum. This latest firmware is not listed in the official .com site or even the European portal. Each of the aforementioned sites list different different versions. On top of that the applicability of firmware according to region is not officially documented anyware (AFAIK). The region segmentation of their products is not mentioned in teh HIK sites either. Now this is not proper inernational support. The plus of HIK is that it is (probably) one of the best of the chinese clan of hardware manufacturers in terms of manufacturing quality, they have rather frequent firmware updates and most importantly it has a large community of knowlegable people in the various forums that cover the lack of official support for free. How many consumers can afford the likes of Bosch, Grundig and other European based designers who manufacture in Asia (in general) and do their original design, prototyping, software development, quality control and support with expenive european labour? As i suggested before, I advise you to prefer a dealer close to you in order to have proper and immediate support even if they do not know what they are selling.

The rumor you have heard is correct. The switch module inside the 760X NVRs is modular and can be changed. Check the DS-7604NI-SEP internal picture. This is the 4 port PoE version DS-7604NI-SEP that also has two SATA inerfaces at the bottom left corner of the board (important). The right half of the board is the switch PoE module that can be changed. Check now the internals of the DS-7608NI-SEP also with 2 SATA interfaces. The right half of the board is the 8 poer PoE switch which is longer than the 4 port switch. Unfortunately HIK does not differentiate the model numbers for the NVRs with 8 ports but only 4 of them being PoE capable. The power supply also seems to be changing between production batches, some of them being better or worse to supply the proper power to the cameras. It is very important to be able to check such things and have the appropriate support from the dealer you are buying.

If i Understand correctly you have non chinese i.e. English region cameras. Can you tell us how does the serial look like? The chinese region cameras have CH in their serial. What does your English camera serial look like?