scorpion

30 frames per second is great if you are watching a mechanical assembly line, and you need to verify the activity. This video may not have a very impressive quality to the video. On the other hand you can have a video that is so impressive that you can count every leaf on a tree. The video may appear more of a series of snap shots than a moving picture. The budget will dictate in which direction you will go. Now if you are demanding excellant video quality, and 30fps then you will have to buy a high end DVR. At the bottom of the market is where you have to make those trade offs. Another is the size of the hard disk drive that will be installed. What you will need to do is decide how long you will want to store your video before it overwrites its self. The minimum that I recommend is 4 days!!! Imagine that you own a business, and something happens on a Friday, and they report to you on a Monday! There is 4 days before you can even try!! Here is a simple forumula that I use. It is not scientific, and it is not perfect, but it is great for refernce. On a 4 camera system you will use about 5 gigabytes of information per camera a day. With 4 cameras then we are talking about 20 giga bytes of information a day!! 20 times 5 equals 100 gigabyte hard drive. 16 channel DVR times 5 equals 80 gigabytes a day times 5 days that equals 400 gigabytes. You may as well buy a 500 gigabyte drive. When you go on vacation you can change the settings on your dvr to 3 frames per second, and you can take it off of excellant quality image, and take it down to the lowest quality image, now you can get long term of recording without eating up the hard drive. Another factor about DVRs is if you are going to be viewing over internet. The fps, and the quality of the video is going to dictate the kind of DVR. Cheap DVRs will have slow processors, and will suffer from lots of heat. Brutally expensive DVRs have extremely fast processors with no video lag, and you can bake them in an oven, and they still keep crunching video data with no loss! The environment in which it will be installed will make or break a DVR. I have customers that think they can stack all of the TV gear on TOP of the DVR in a cramped entertainment unit, and that will be fine! Ya! Go ahead and throw some more nails in to the DVRs coffin while you are at it! LOL!

I really do not know what is wrong! I thought maybe the java would solve the problem. It is strange that you can long in with a pc, but not with the gprs!

You will have to buy another 4 port DVR, or you will have to sell the first one, then upgrade to an 8 channel DVR.

This would depend on the monitor. Many TVs today have pip (or pp) built in. Take Sony for example. They have it where you press options on your remote control. A side bar comes up, and you scroll to pp, and another screen comes up. You now have two pictures on your screen. You can control either screen by pressing the right button, or the left button. When you toggle to the right you can contol what "input" will give you a video feed. Press input and a sidebar comes up and you can select from composite, component, or HDMI input. Then you can toggle to the left, and do the same thing. Now the best part! Press the up, or the down button and it will change the size of your screens. You can have two equal screens side by side, or you can make one more "dominate" then the other. As you toggle to the left, or to the right then the sound (built in to the tv, and not from a receiver) will follow the which screen is "active". I do not know how your monitor is setup so I cannot tell you if you can do it or not. I do not know of a DVR that has DVI, or component output that I am aware of, but it would be nice!

When you are playing back the audio you can run it through high end equalizers, and notch filters. If you are an electronics buff, then you can set up two mics. One for recording, and the other to listen to the back ground noise, and then cancel it on the main mic.

Check your local laws before you do. It can be a real pain in the neck, but three feet lower when you are doing audio recording. It will also depend on what you are going to do with the recording. If you are just going to keep this "information" to yourself then take it upon yourself to do so, but we "told you so". If you plan on getting a recording, and presenting it to someone with the "GOTCHA"!! Then I would highly, and I repeat highly recommend that you make up some signs forwarning people that audio recordings are in progress, and post them in a good visible spot. I see that you want to have the microphone hidden, and that is a sign of the "I got you, and here it is back in your face"! If it is to be hidden for security purposes that is fine, but hook up a visible microphone so that it can be seen, and someone cannot say they did not know that they were being recorded. If someone tried to damage it then the hidden one would be protected, and you would still have the recording. I would actually recommend buying a bullet camera with the microphone built in. http://icrealtime.com/solutions/cameras.asp?cameraid=ICR150 If you buy 20 to 30 units then I am sure they would be glad to sell direct. you will need to find a distributor near you. Just remember if you do a "bad" video recording it is misdemeanor, and if you do a bad audio recording it is a felony. You can video tape ladies in a dressing room, and you will get slapped on the wrist. If you have audio taping with it you had better run, and hide before the police get you, as they can throw the book at you. Microphones are great in businesses. If they get robbed by a crook with a hidden face then you might recognize the perp by an accent, or a lisp, or the police dept may recognize the perp by voice! If you are doing a recording from a long distance to where someone is standing then you may need a shotgun microphone. Do not forget that when you listen to the recordings that you are going to be hearing every plane, train, and automobile, and all other street noises!

You can download the software on my site. Please feel free to download it. ____________________________________________________________ It sounds strange that you can use a PC to watch your video remotely, but the cellphone/PDA will not let you log in on that IP address. Is it possible that you need the Java download to go with it??? Can your cellphone go to http://scorpiontheater.com/pda.aspx and can you view the table of contents, and can you scroll down to where it says pda page? If you can see this then your cell phone is working fine on the internet. ????

Will they be made in Finland now? LOL!

How high is the camera, and how high was the last snow drift? Sorry. I know that was of no help! LOL!

I love AVTech Products, and I am recommending the AVC 785. You can download the manual from my site, and read it before you buy.

Someone was asking me about this, and I have never heard of this problem. Have any of you experienced this? He has a Gadspot GS1000. Using the video server he has an account I believe with http://www.dyndns.com/ After he clicked "apply" in the server software he says that it does not retain the information that he has entered. This one has me stumped http://scorpiontheater.com/Documents/DNS.jpg Any ideas?

AVC 760? It should have come with Video Server E. What IP address was entered in to the DVR? What IP address are you entering in to the application software (Video Server E)? Feel free to change the numbers around to protect your privacy. I wanted to see if the DVR was at default settings, and you were entering a different IP address in the server E. If you are using a router, then the it may be giveing you some kind of "grief". What kind of router do you have? If all else fails you could do a hardware reset on the DVR that will take it back to factory default settings.

Don't you miss the good old day when you had 8 VCRs stacked on a rack with three 8 hour tapes (24 hours of recording) per VCR with 7 days of history which meant you had 168 tapes to keep track of! I miss the good old days! LOL!! Or you could be like Blockbuster Video with 30 tapes of time lapse for the month. (Look in the office the next time you go, and you will see a big box with all of the tapes on the managers desk! EGADS!

If there was a way of getting a composite video from your remote DVRs then I would try this. I think this would only work with IP cameras where you have a box that unconverts the digital back to analog. You could take 4 analog composite video feeds, and you can hook them up to a mulitplexor, and then put this on to a monitor. This would give you four equal squares of video. I would not know how to do this with off site DVRs.

When you are viewing your remote video, how much of the screen does it take up? Does it fill the whole screen?

I am an AVTech DVR guy. I love the standalones for the residential market. I would really not want to have to go back, and try to fix a computer as the "teenager" tried to down load limewire, kazaa, P2P, and then go to all of the free game sites, and then hit the yellow bar everytime it said " would you like to enhance your web browsing experience"? Then again I would not want to put in and entry level DVR at a corporate business with an in house IT dept!

Welcome to my world! Just as I get to know the products out there here come more products on the market. When talking to individuals about DVRs I would say it is like talking about cars. Some people are die hard "Chevy" people, and some people are die hard "ford" people. Some people will rant about the quality of Foreign brands. I ask what product did they start their career on? What they trained on is usually what they tend to stick with. Others will have amassed a life time of experience base on bad products with bad tech support all the way to good products with super exellant tech support! Others stick with a brand based on dealer pricing. Others will stick with a DVR as this is what is in the catalog of their Distribution Chain. What I am saying is that you will not get the same answer from different people. Although everyone will chip in with a known, and really bad product. All I can say is dont believe what you read, and dont believe what people tell you! I would tell you not to trust me, and that would be the best thing. My specialty is entry level market, and entry level price products. These products may not be for you. Here is how to buy a DVR. Know how you are going to use it. Is this for daytime use only? Is this for Nighttime use only? Will this be used 24 hours a day? What is the "threat level". Are you guarding a few home electronics, or are you guarding one million dollars in cash? (what is your address again)? LOL! The quality of the DVR is going to be effected by what kind of cameras you hook up to it. If you buy a million dollar DVR, and hook up 99 cent cameras to it then the video is going to be very disapointing! I have seen mediocre DVRs with some very high end cameras attached, and even I would have to say that I never expected such good video from a cheap DVR, but then again with excellant cameras come excellant video. As for the $1000 price tag you will see a lot of variety. You may get the product cheap, but then you will not be able to get any tech support to save your life!! You may pay to much for a DVR, but then when you have major problems they may come to your rescue so fast that it will make your head spin!! Take your homework on the DVRs that you have "investigated". Look at the features that you like. Make a list. Now go around looking for DVRs base on a set of "specs". If everyone has the same specs then you should get a better level of pricing. You will know who is gouging you, and who is so cheap that it it may be a remanufactured product. (nothing wrong with that, but I do not like people who sell remanufactured stuff as if it was brand new. That really makes me mad)! Before you buy: Call the company with a "fake complaint". Do they answer the phone? Do they respond to your emails? Small companies such as MOM, and POP business may be overworked, and may not respond right away. They will respond, and they will take care of you. You may need to be patient. Then there is the big internet site that can sell stuff all day long, and they do not need to tend to the "little" people. You almost have to beg for help! I am exaggerating, but you get the point. Go to my website, and compare other websites. I do not have much time to work on my website, so it tends to look a little "sloppy". I cannot afford to pay someone $5000.00 to put a glossy site together for me. I would have to raise my prices, and then I would have to get out of the entry level market, and then I would have to sell the $3000.00 and higher DVRs. Now lets wait around for another member of this forum by the name of Rory who will make fun of me as I tend to write "novels" as he would say! CCTV_Suppliers has a lot of good advice about buying DVRs! He will tell you to look for the products with 3 year warrantys, and that $1000 is kind of pushing it, but then you are not to far from the price point that you have asked for.

Most of my customers do not have exotic internet connections. Some have static IPs. I believe that you are always going to have some lag time watching video over the internet. Jpeg DVRs that I have used will give somewhat of a realtime view of what is going on, and the trade off is that the video appears somewhat "grainy". I have some other DVRs where you can count every leaf on a tree, but the video appears more of a series of snapshots of pictures. As to having the DVR video on your desktop. You would have to minimize your browser, and then use the cursor, and right click on the edges, and then you will have to drag to the left, or right to get the browser screen to be half of your monitor space, and then the video can sit in the unused portion, and then you would have a "split" screen. The disadvantage to this is that you have to scroll left, and right to read emails, and websites, but then you could maximize the screen momentarly, and then go back to a minimized screen when you are done. AP (application) AP is the software that we put on to our computers so that we can remotely see AVTech DVRs, and CPCam DVRs. Some DVRs will use Video Server S, and others will use Video Server E. For the entry level priced market there are customers that like the AVTech DVRs. You hit the icon on your desktop, and you punch in your password, and then you see your video in a small window. I would say it is about 1/4 the monitor size of your screen. This is where I place 4 of them in each "corner" of my monitor screen. I have my cable T.V. fed in to one of my DVR channels, and with the remote Application I can hit that "camera" channel, and then I can see what going on in the news. If there is that BREAKING NEWS! Then I can turn to my TV, and watch there instead of on my remote ap. I watch the weather to keep on eye on thunder storms. Here in Florida a thunder storm can pop up out of no where, and I may have some techs up on a ladder, and I can give them a heads up about incoming rain. I can also tell them to avoid such, and such road as there is blockage with an accident, and if a fatality was involved then that road will be closed for at least 4 hours while the police investigate.

How about a KVM switch? I also look at various remote dvrs. I bring up four AVTech DVRs by remote software. I place APs in each corner of my screen. I do this with my local DVR as well, rather than live feed. With it being local I do not have any lag time as the video is off the lan, and not the wan.

You could take the composite video output of the DVR, and you can hook it up to this.. http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103065&cp=&sr=1&origkw=composite+distribution&kw=composite+distribution&parentPage=search then you can hook this up to several composite input monitors. I would take one of the camera loop outs and then I would attach it to a web server for ip video. You could do the same with a multi screen from the DVR video output as well. Then there are items like this that can make a project interesting... http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2284675&cp=2032057.2032187.2032188.2032195&parentPage=search&sr=1&origkw=composite+distribution&kw=composite+distribution&parentPage=family What do you think?

Now if I can just keep the contest a secret for a while, then I can win hands down!

Does anyone know what the MCU file is in the CPCam firmware 2.0.05? I have not see it in any earlier versions of firmware.

Espanol Manuals have been added to my site. This seemed to be the number one keyword search requested from my site reports for the month of November. If anyone has anyother language manuals please let me know!

Have you found any products/software in regards to wifi phone?

Excellant Idea!