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Can you provide internal photos? Depending on its guts I may be able to provide a working firmware for it. Ever telnet/serial into it?

To be honest, I'm not sure. Exactly what is your goal here?

I'd just like to say this. From what I've seen, a fair portion of DVRs are embedded linux based; linux being linux, hardware issues aren't a problem, as long as you have the code (which legally speaking, manufacturers have to release a decent portion of due to the GPL license on the kernel and related utils). Sure, the driver for my nightowl dvr's tw2866 av chip won't help for his nvp video processing chip, but a large portion of the core software (kernel, busybox userspace, etc) is directly usable. Also, if manufacturers would handle firmware sanely, eg, using the v4l2 api for av chips and devices, more software would interoperate on different hardware better. In my case, had nightowl done things better, instead of presenting one /dev/tw2866 device for all four chips on my dvr (and each of their four channels), we would have generic /dev/video[0-15] devices which could be addressed singly, and the webserver built into the firmware would be configurable for x amount of /dev/video* devices. Further, we bought our products with our money. We should have the freedom to do whatever we wish with them, either modifying the software on it or sticking it into a trash compactor, even if it is old.

Zoneminder may be what you're after. I believe they have installation media in the form of live cds.

For the record, firmware is software. Just very specialized. On embedded systems, sometimes its a full on linux install with busybox.

It is clear you no nothing of CCTV ..... Do you understand what a standalone is do you even know what CIF is ?? What you are saying can not be done ..... It's not hate and nothing to do about freedom . It's about you saying take your 10 year old unit and change the software To be 100% frank, no, I don't know all the CCTV terms, CIF is basically a resolution, correct? I'm assuming standalone is what it says, you can use the dvr by itself, without needing network connectivity. What little I do know is from dealing with 2x nightowl zeus-dvr, circa 2011 or so, and 2x dvrs from samsung techwin, and the annoyance of how some of their stuff is handled (for example, IE only web interfaces, and then only with an activex plugin that doesn't work on modern IE), and what I've learned in general about embedded systems. I'm making some assumptions here, but if his machine is linux embedded (good chance of that), and those four pins are in fact a uart (also a good chance), he can get in, and extract firmware and possibly analyze it to get the pass he needs. For example, on my nightowl, the primary binary that operates the web server (and I think the ui you get when you plug in a monitor directly, not 100% sure on that) has some hard-coded passwords you simply cannot change without modifying the binary. maybe his does to, I don't know, and won't know untill we have that look.

Its amazes me how much time folks will waste to save a couple of dollars, but more importantly end up with an inferior CIF dvr.... It amazes me how many people are happy just sitting with crappy firmware on an machine that vendors will ditch in a year or two, and then replace it with a new machine with the same kind of crappy firmware, instead of maybe taking the time to explore the idea of getting a good base going that can be easily ported to new machines when you do decide to upgrade. I don't know about you, but I'm not in any way considered rich or well off. I make around $300 a week, so I don't have the freedom to just buy a new thing. What I do have is a fairly nice pc, a desire to learn, a love of tinkering, and a fair amount of free time with which to tinker with. What we're doing here isn't anything more than getting them into their machine. That's it. Now, if they want to do more with that, great, more power to them. But why you guys have to be so negative and hateful about this is beyond me. Its their time, their money, their freedom to do what they want with something they own.

Nope, I don't expect him to rewrite the software, I'm already working on that (though I would appreciate collaboration with others). I'm personally just in it to collect info on whatever targets are available, currently targetting dvrs based on hisilicon stuff. Already got a booting kernel 4.8-rc4, and getting more working each day.

NO. Please tell us how firmware (which is software) turn a over 10 year old recorders hardware (components) into a modern D1 or above without better hardware Please let us know how. Why spend money or time on a proprietary recorder with CIF and no network And it's over 10 years old ...... It will have no support. I didn't say anything about about making it physically better. I said that applying a firmware update to it to improve it (rtsp, support browsers other than IE, etc) can be easier on the wallet than buying an all new machine. Not telling him to 'download more ram'. Lets see, he got it for $5, I don't see any real reason to be worried about that amount, and why spend the time? To learn? Because you like to tinker?

Always worth it. A lot of older hardware could be given a new lease on life with better firmware, and some folks are in tight financial situations, so using an older router with better firmware is easier than a brand new router with better hardware but prolly ****ty firmware. same goes for a lot of IoT/embedded devices

Is this what you're referring to? Appears to be a 4 pin connection of some kind, labelled J1 Could be UART. Could be pin headers for activating the decepticons. I have no idea. I do not have any serial devices BUT I do have an unused arduino that could become one? I believe you can transform an arduino into one. I suggest you grab one up though, damned useful to have serial devices on hand for embedded. The demo board for the soc in my dvr actually could function either as a standalone dvr or as a pci card, and maybe its for an expansion like you said. no idea. NVP is vidya proccessing, I think. Do can you get some close ups of the larger chips? If what you have is related to mine, it could be very useful info for me to have

Great! When are you sending me one? Absolutely. As high as a resolution as my LG G3 will allow: Oooo, I spy a potential uart (next to the reset switch and one of the screws attaching the mainboard). Do you have on hand anything along the lines of a bus pirate, shikra, or any other sort of serial device? You can potentially gain root via physical means and from there maybe find some passwords.

I'm not 100% sure it's an actual X server - or if that's just what FING decided to call it based on the open port. If it is, it's weird, and if not, what the heck is it? Nope. I have officially found zero information on this unit on the entire internet. Emails to ITX go unanswered, and emails to seller websites just tell me to contact the manufacture. All I have is a box that displays cameras. I can't do anything else with it. No password. I'd love it if I could telnet/ssh into this thing. That would at least give me something, but no, I've tried. All connections get "refused". Even anonymous. Nothing works. I have another DVR that I run four other cameras on, and you can't SSH into it either, but typing in the IP address of the machine brings up a web browser GUI that allows you to set settings and view cameras. When typing in the IP address of this box, I get 404 error, and typing in the IP plus the open port, I get "this connection is restricted" I'm absolutely comfortable with hardware. Let me know what you'd like to see up close, the unit is open and ready for tinkering. I'm going to attempt to configure a harmony remote to operate this machine, see what that does - if anything. Do you think you could provide more brightly lit, closer, and higher res pics of the guts?

Wow, an xserver running on an embedded system? I'm intrigued. (x is the server that runs pretty much all linux gui systems [new replacement called wayland is being made, but its not exactly ready yet. you can use it, but its still being worked on]). You could possibly work out some form of exploit based on that, but it won't be easy. Do you happen to have a firmware file for this? Also, from my experience the password you use to telnet/ssh (stored in the files /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow on the device) is often different from the password used to hit the web server/local display software (On mine the passwords and such are explicitly written to the flash memory directly, but I bet others may use a proper database system). Are you comfortable with hardware stuff?

I'm actually working on developing a firmware for another hi3520 based dvr, do you think you could provide some more photos, especially of the chips on board? [EDIT] Oh, on second look this is a hi3520d, which is fairly different. I do want to tackle that at some point, though