dbdataplus

Many years ago I was turned on to Dauha from a buddy in Florida that was a reseller. His company provided the support and it was good support and it got the job done. I was startled from the outset at the problems --- 'search' function would return something like "Too many results AND the first 100!" in what was clearly amateurish coding and you could see that QC wasn't an issue. With each new unit I got, as the newer versions became more and more dumbed down and this "haze" of dysfunction in the firmware got worse. In the fullness of time he went out of business and, no matter who else I went to and no matter where I obtained product, there was ALWAYS a reason that Dahua would not provide support. When I left the industry it was SO BAD that every single time someone opened a browser to a DVR a new and different version of "webrec,cab" had to be downloaded each and every time ... Dahua claimed that people use "SmartViewer" instead but that software is itself an exercise in bad programming managed by blind idiocy. It can seamlessly connect to 12 different DVR's at the same time while managing to make them all functionally inoperable "More fact in next table!" Then there is gDMSS and gDMSSlite and the absolute jaw-dropping realization that yes, a team of incompetent programmers write a product and get it to market without so much as a single line of intelligent code. just - WOW. But those were the old days and now I just need on for myself. Just for me. one time. And since I don't need to make a profit I want the best. Prompts in English and support that actually supports. What I have found so far is an entire market in China with a dozen brands ... three of which I've tried so far (thanks Amazon free returns!) that all turned out to be versions of Jooan ... and their software is so bad that it aspires to BE Dauha one day. Q: Where is the good stuff? Where is the company that was willing to spend the money ONE TIME to have a native English-speaker write the manual and QC the dialog boxes? THE FIRST LINE OF PRODUCT SUPPORT - is to make a product so well and so intuitive that it's doesn't require support in the first place. Where is that product?

Years ago someone hooked me up with a Dahua 8 channel DVR and it was OK for the price. As I became a bit more experienced I found that virtually none of the brands I came across were what I'd call "great" in fact the common thread I sensed was that the people who designed these things were not overly familiar with the term user-friendly and their utilities were ... to be kind ... written by people who are not overly familiar with Windows. But that said I muddled through and then another came along and then another and of course once ytou have 11 in the field it doesn't matter how bad they are ... when you need a 12th unit you go with what you know. This week I installed a 32 channel Pentabrid DVR to replace two units (one Lorex and one SEE) and some but not all the channels are blank (loading) then the image, then pixelated , then bleed from other channels .. then blank, etc. It's easy to just say "probably a bad unit" but this is SO bad ... SO unusual ... SO beyond imagination; I guess what I'm saying is that I can't imagine an engineer not able to imagine how this could happen ... and yet when I call Dahua it was like tossing a wet sock against the wall. Just ... nothing. I have an 8mb mp4 I made of the problem and Dahua says that their tech support department can't download/read or display mp4 files. Anyone have a suggestion?

I inherited a set of installations that all use Dahua Xvr DVRs and after having some months experience with them I know (I think) what to look for. Basically, the hardware is fine. I prefer hard wired cameras as opposed to IP but I'm not a Luddite and I'll go where the market goes, but what I can't seem to get past is the bizarre software that these units have. Setup is OK, it's not terribly intuitive but it is a once & done thing. The problem is in search and playback. The local tools, involving a web browser, involve the downloading of some Active X cabinets that Windows treats like toxic waste, several of the DVR's require different versions so the downloading happens frequently ... and then when you are connected the screens for search and playback look like they come from another planet. Worse ... downloading ... I put in my search criteria and I get 8 pages of files and the software won;t let me select all files, only by page ... so I have to select all on this page, then wait for the download which even to a PC on the same local switch is barely 1300KB/s and then I have to go to the next page and repeat, etc. And more ... when I finally get them all downloaded the tools that Dahua has "smart player" and "pss" are barely comprehensible. So what I'm asking is what brands of DVR/NVR out there have software that was tested and approved by actual normal people before it was shipped? Intuitive and logical? I honestly can't look at this Dahua stuff and think that there is a person on the planet that would call it intuitive. I'm ready to junk all 10 boxes if there are better ones. Any suggestions?