Overcast451

This is my first time considering installing a home Surveillance System, so I am kind of clueless at this point. I started looking around on the web for various systems, but I have a number of questions in my mind about how I should go about this.. Figure it's better to ask for some advice and get some ideas so I know what to look for - and what to avoid! I'm weighing a 'dedicated DVR' type of system, vs. a custom PC. I'm very fluent in computing in general and I understand video concepts pretty well. So a complicated system won't intimidate me - I'm more concerned with flexibility, dependability, and quality. By quality - I'm more referring to the quality of the system itself. As for the video quality, I don't need 1080p but it still needs to be decent. The things I'm looking for in a system are: Flexibility with types of cameras I can use. USB/WiFi/Ethernet/Fi-Optic/Coax/Night-vision/Low-Profile - basically I want to be able to hook up most any modern camera to it. There are a couple cameras that I would prefer WiFi on, and others I can make a physical cable run to. I want to keep the camera's profile to a minimum, and a lot of the 'canned' systems seem to have cameras that just stand way out. I'm not going for hidden cameras per-se, just some that don't stick out like a sore thumb. Storage Flexibility. I want to just be able to buy hard drives and install them. I am considering using a SAN or a Storage Server for this, or if I use a PC - I'll probably go with a RAID disk setup. It's very possible I'll setup some method to replicate data to cloud storage - so software flexibility is important also. I'm looking for at least 8 channels as well. Cost is somewhat of a concern, but if it's flexible - I can just build it up over time as well. I'd rather spend more for something decent, than get some cheap junk that's not dependable. I don't want to be locked into a specific vendor at all. That's a hassle and in the long run, there's little value to me in overly proprietary systems. I know I can build a custom PC and get just what I want, but I suspect there are some decent systems out there as well. So if anyone is willing to toss out some suggestions or links on hardware/software, it would be greatly appreciated.