beagle187

Thanks!! Just found a nice NVR system from swann at SAMs Club for $600. Comes with 4 3MP cameras, full 1080P, and can add 4 more cameras later if they need to.

My parents are going out of town next weekend and they want two or three cameras setup to monitor their home while they are gone. I am an IT person by trade but am just getting started into the IP Camera world. I have an older analog Night Owl camera system at my home. It works good but the picture quality is limited because of the technology. What is the best route to setup for my parents? They want at least two outside cameras to watch over a pool area and the driveway area. I have thought about something like Axis cameras with the built in SD card to hold the video it captures (motion record only). Are there any other cheaper brand cameras? Wasn't sure about the monitoring offsite. I know the Axis cameras have built in DDNS, so maybe we can use that to access them from their iPad or iPhone while they are away. What do you think? Also, is a wifi IP camera worth the money to save on cabling?

I have also been looking at SightHound as well for NVR software. I am still really debating the HD-SDI systems. With those, I won't have to worry about the computer going down, messing up, etc...

I am thinking I'll setup a PC and use blue iris software. Then add some hikvison cameras. Have you ever used any HD-SDI systems? Just saw some of those.

I have been looking at Hikvision and I noticed they have SD card slots, but how do I access the video on the card and/or setup streaming so I can access via mobile devices? Axis has their Camera Companion software that does all this automatically.

I have three different sites I want to setup with Cameras. Site one will have 5 cameras, site two will have 7 cameras, and site three will have 4 cameras. I plan to purchase a PC and install Blue Iris at each site to capture the cameras at that particular site. However, I wanted to know if I can view all the cameras that are being recorded at different sites on one machine? Can I access the stored video from each site and be able to play it back?