CCTV_Suppliers

Before you can focus on the type of DVR, my suggestion was to share what type of camera equipment you really have. It is a mute point to ask the DVR to provide certain functionality if video quality coming from your cameras may be substandard... You remember GIGO effect right? I am not familiar with the product that mr. surveillance is referring and chances are good that it is a decent product. But if you cameras do not provide the minimum and decent quality picture, then it really does not matter which DVR you use... the end result will not be satisfactory... Seems to me that only price is the driving force on your selection of DVR. If so, then why not look at what members offer from GEO or similar company solutions? As long as you have a decent computer, these guys can guide you to purchase something fairly cheap and yet works well... and there is a tremendous amount of support for GEO and other similar company products in this forum...

Will Sanyo Brand suffice?

Cheap is always good... but, how many days of recording do you expect to gain from these type of systems? Also, does the warranty matter in your purchase? I understand most of low end DVRs and cameras come with one year warranty, will it worth for you to pay little more for three years warranty? Embedded system will do this trick for you, no question about it... As you stated, someone gave you the camera equipment... What do you really have on hand, like make and models of these cameras?? Having good DVR does not mean anything if your cameras produce poor quality video to start off with... I probably can not match up $400.00 range for a DVR, but for $500.00 range, I can give you a package from major manufacturer and with three years warranty...

Very funny...

Both are low cost and very well built... Both are embedded and hard drive gets used only to store video and nothing else. CBC will give you better playback quality picture - it is using true MPG4 protocol for recording.. Combined with several other options - remote control unit, upgrade hard drives to up to 1.5TB (using (2) 750GB drives and you can do it yourself - as you can buy this model without hard drive) and easier to program makes it better overall.. Also, this model from CBC is more cost effective... Lastly, it includes many popular dome control protocols allowing you to control PTZ domes from various manufacturers. EDVR that you are referring is a good platform too, but has its shortcomings... One of the major advantage is that it comes with built in PTZ control protocol for American Dynamics PTZ domes (CBC claims that theirs do, but it does not work). If I had the choice, I will go with CBC due to cost and more versatility... Regardless which one you pick, both come with three years manufacturer warranty and that is a big plus...

Can you please give us your equipment list? The make and the model numbers of all your system components will help to give you the right answer.

Excellent observations man... Now we are looking at the balun technology from so many different angles and problems that persist being caused by other obstacles... Looks like you have more knowledge on cables, so can you please elaborate more on them that can and do cause deterioration of the video signal exceeding lets say 750' distances?

Survtech, great observations man... I think you should take the lead on this topic going forward, since you already have done so much to reveal this valuable results. What I can contribute are similar info from our manufacturers.. Next week sometimes, I will have our engineers to run similar tests with spectrum analyzers and signal generators to get similar or different results based on different tests.. In addition, I will obtain internal tests results from various manufacturers also, who may or may not want to release them... but I do know that with persistence attitude, they should release them... Lets take this as in depth as possible... and share such info with everyone.

Feet...

As ColinR stated.. it "depends" and I will add depends where you are in the country... Normally cable internet are a lot more stable vs. dsl lines that depend a lot with your internal phone wiring.. In many cases people ordered DSL with high capacity of up and down speeds and they were not able to get even half what was promised... In case of cable Internet, you have only cable wire and dependent on the strength of the signal to the house or the business, then you can be assured same level of performance.

Try not to increase the able length more than 50'... unless if you want to use power supply with variable voltage control - this is available from various source... this way you can increase your voltage at the source to maintain constant input voltage for your camera... dependent on your camera voltage input, 24VAC or 12VDC (or sometimes there are cameras that come with 9VDC), you can use these power supplies to extend the cable lengths more than 50' (normally no more than 200' dependent on the capability of your variable power supply). Hope this helps.

Lou, how did MPLT situation work out? One way to determine if AD can fix it under warranty is to get serial numbers and we can validate... As for the Intellex Ultra CD sets, did you have chance to call and talk to AD applications? Remember, the CD set for their flash drive is based on which motherboard you have and once they identify the part number, it will be very easy to get you these CD sets for restore... Also, is your Intellex Ultra come with 1G or 2G memory? If it is 1G, chances are very good that you will observe problems with it and it is recommended to take it to 2G (space restrictions that application require)... Let us know.

Survtech, great ideas man... As long as your control the test for the optimum results... I do not think NVT will measure up with your tests... Very close observation on their spec sheets reveals that they do not recommend stretch of the cable more than 750 and I concur with them. When we run tests while back, NVT did come short on the test results and yet their baluns were the most expensive. Further research found many other manufacturers, which also brought VU in the picture and the rest became a history. I think we can start another thread just for baluns alone. I am not sure why admin or the moderators may mind... afterall, this is real info for everyone to observe and comment and more importantly, sharpen everyones knowledge.

Survtech, I think you bottleneck is the NVT passive balun that came with CBC minidome... Even though this model from CBC is been obsolete, the data is still there... Will you be able to use the pairs of each model of baluns for the entire test purposes, instead of mixing them with NVT at the minidome side and different balun from another manufacturer at the termination side? Your numbers are very impressive. Even when all come close to what you have observed, then the only question that you need to ask of course is the cost per pair of such hardware...

How about something very simple and easy to use and yet upgradeable for higher capacity of internal storage, if you want? I can recommend two models: 1. CBC DR8N - 8 channel, add whatever PATA drives size you want, CD burner, remote hand held controller, internet ready and should be around $900.00 range and with three years warranty. Or, you can get preloaded system with hard drives, which are nothing more than just for storage only at higher price. 2. American Dynamics 9 channel ADEDVR009008 DVR - this model comes with 80GB storage, CD burner and the works... and with three years warranty. Pricing should be around $1,100 range There are other makers of similar products and let me know if you need more info. Some are lower and some are higher in cost..

That is what I said too...

Rory, I am not welcome in Dealers section remember?

VU pricing that I can get for you is $30.00 for PAIR - $15.00 each!

You are fast man... I guess if all of them fall in same performance category, then the only question is whose pricing is the best?? Can you share this info? I know the pricing for VU is $30.00 for PAIR of their baluns...

High res or low res? I have ton of Sanyo 330TVL minidomes that I would like to get rid of...

Lets do that...

Survtech, your misinterpreting what this post is about and rather focusing on my dislike of a company?... I do not care which company you use and whose products you like... that isn't the point of this post... rather facts pertinent to video baluns... If you want to get technical, then lets do that... Lets bring top guns in this process and lets go into the design and results available using spectrum analyzers, type of signal generators used and validation of data... and lets bring both manufacturers in this process for them to validate their claims... I know that I can bring VU in this discussion (by the way, they already are a member) and you can bring GVI and let them battle... and then we can compare our notes based on the facts... Is this what you want? Your insinuation that I am pro-AD is also totally inaccurate... If you really have to know, my preference always have been and always will be Bosch... and I mean everything Bosch. Nothing out there can come close to the complete selection of solutions available from Bosch... and I do not think anyone, including your Pelco, is capable doing what Bosch has to offer. If the purpose of this post is video baluns, then lets stay with video baluns.. If I do not wish to comment on a product from a manufacturer, you can interpret it whatever you want - like or dislike of a company. May be we should have a separate post just for this topic alone, what do you think? May be we can lay down our cards and show the world what these companies are made of and who actually is doing a good job and who is just screwing people. This way we can clarify and probably bring forward information that is not very well known in this industry... If you do want this post to appear, then you and I will have yet another problem - you are an end user, we are integrators and distributors... so chances are very good that our opinions will clash again and again, as you are exposed only on what manufacturers want you to see... In our case, nothing will pass by us without scrutiny of any product they offer and we can and will stop them on their tracks, if they are out of line or state facts that may not be true... and trust me, I have caught too many pre-mediated incidents in my 29 years in this industry from various manufacturers, including your Pelco, that was headed to screw people...

On its way Rory May be I will send you Pelco and Survtech will send you AD

Survtech, is this mean that we are cool about this subject? Or should we take it to the next level? You already know what I think of anything Pelco, so I will not comment on them or on any of their products, regardless that Pelco is owned by someone else now. We tested Pelco's passive baluns before against VU's baluns and we conclusively (without any bias) seen that VU provided better performance and much more cost effective price. As I stated before, I am not familiar with GVI and I can not make any comments, regardless if their design is identical with VU or not... We did however tested Vigitron and several others, including NVT and even American Fibertek and the final conclusion was that performance was better overall and yet VU provided much more cost effective price for pair of baluns ($30.00 per pair of baluns and that is a price is difficult to match comparatively speaking). We even tested baluns from China ranging price of $3.00 to $10.00 and they all were junk and not worth the money. These type of baluns were probably good for short distances, less than 500', but not useful for our apps. You have a very unique uses for such technology gadgets and I respect your opinion on your findings. You yourself stated that VU baluns were as good as the other manufacturer offerings. If you do not believe my statements on cable lengths, then that is fine too.. I am not here to impress anyone, rather passing real data and useful information and it is up to you to decide if you want to take it or not. Video baluns technology came along and evolved very well in the past at least 10 years and it is here to stay. By being positive above VU is no way that I am trying to endorse their products - we did have some batch of baluns that were not up to snuff and the company replaced them without any problems at all.... However... unless someone can give me real time data that will challenge our information, I will stand firm on my assessment! After all, we are using these baluns everyday and no problems.

Rory, I can tell you stories about bad or poor quality cables... In order to achieve over 1,000'+ distances, baluns alone will not do the trick, rather quality of the cable... I understand that if we shift our focus on active baluns, some of this cheaper cables could perform, but will still short change the distance of such cable. It is very possible that your cable could have been the cause... or type of baluns you used... or combination of both. We have conclusively done many tests with various manufacturer cables and baluns and we end up selecting the ones that gave us the maximum return, rather a cheap solution that may work for lower distance apps... This way we were able to reduce overall costs to our end users for their installs... passing major savings in cable and labor usage...