tesc_cctvpro

Difficult scenario with the Pc ,etc --- because they don't want anything running 24/7

Hmmm.... Just buy the Maplin if it's cheap. If you haven't been asked how far you want see, whether you want to identify anything, need to record , etc, etc --- you will get the same result from that cheap system as you gonna get from any other system somebody recommends.

(1) Do a ping on the dvr ip address and note the TTS -----> Let us know the result. (2) Network viewing is a trade off between remote view and quality --- try setting your video quality and frame rates, and bit-rate lower and see what you get. That's a typical issue with networks -----usually if you can't see the door and the lan display at the same time you wouldn't notice ----- and thousands never ever do, because they are far away from the DVR If you are that close , why don't you use the live view of the machine on a monitor.

Have you got any other monitors to try , try a few different ones ------ I have only ever switched on one AVtech dvr , not exactly the kind of thing we normally deal with ----- Tomcctv seems to be quite knowledgeable with them and will probably come along with the right advice soon. Whenever I have had an issue such as this with display resolution, i've usually found a different monitor that brings back the display and allows me to set the resolution properly. And oh ----- regardless of what anybody tells you ---- don't plug your vga in or out while the equipment is switched on! Numerous installers laugh at me when i tell them that ---- but proof of the pudding is when you see sparks as you make or break the connection ---- hope you don't have a dead vga port. I won't comment again as I would be wasting your time - as I haven't worked with or paid any attention to the avtech dvr's past the 5 or 10 which we once sold. I am sure somebody will know how to default the device if all else fails.

A major problem with online stores and many distributors is that they have moved the integrator out of the position they once held in the market - that of a bona fide retailer with specialist security knowledge. They sell to the end users and to any installer in any location. Installers with the specialist security knowledge start having to shave costs to deliver and compete with hundreds of other installers all buying from the same place. While they leave the installers fighting for pittances, whenever the really big contracts are awarded, they are awarded directly to the distributors that are kept in business mostly by the hoard of installers. The end user is getting crappy equipment, no security knowledge, no support and no backup whatsoever - then the customers of these online gift store and dime a dozen distributors, come onto forums such as these asking and getting the information from the same installers that are bleeding under the onslaught ---- and what really amazes me is that these installers give the advice free - hoping to sell a camera or two in the process. I have utter disregard for manufacturers who support that kind of security!

What monitor have you got connected to the VGA?

I haven't had a lot to do with AVtechs - but isn't there a way to access the config via the network and set the correct display selection.

Ray ----- the first stop for help, should be the person who sold it to you. That's the guy that got away selling it cheaper than most on this forum, because he obviously didn't have to account for the extra costs of support, backup and training.....especially when a lot of the CCTV guys here are going to do it for him ----for free!

I reckon it's the average price. Given that when we started with CCTV a good harwdare compression card of 4 channels cost $400 and some still do today? There is no way I am even imagining that a HDcctv standalone has any place in the market currently. But could anybody think of a situation where a setup like this could be used. $400 capture card, HDcctv cameras could probably be picked up for $200-$250 each.....

Doesn't the person who sold you this dvr give any support? That's the guy that took bread off the tables of the very people who are going to help you with this problem.

Some pointers --- While the Qsee DVR has 720p Live View --- the best most any dvr's are going to record is 4CIF (Lucky if you get actual 480TVL) So paying extra for the 500+ TVL is a waste. The difference in a camera with an Infra Red Cut Filter and one without - is well worth extra money. All Infra-Red ratings are done indoors, and will be far less outdoors than is rated for distance. Infra-Red operates largely by reflecting from surfaces - and outdoors, nobody can express the degree of reflection for your situation, so saying what distance night vision you will get is guessing at most. The biggest illusion used by people who know nothing at all about CCTV is when they tell you they have a 36 LED camera that will give you 100ft night vision. Added to the issue of reflection above ...where your infra-reds are usually just dissipating into the night area with very little reflective surfaces, you look and find they have added a 5mm lens. At 45ft with a 5mm lens in the daytime you will get an image in which a human target will fill 11% of your screen size - 10% is the minimum accepted for the lowest level of usable surveillance. What kind of vision are you getting at 100ft in the night time. --- On this point alone the swan system is more truthful, and more realistic with the 480TVL resolution. The only problem with a 1/4" sensor compared to a 1/3" sensor is light sensitivity - but because you have infra-red lamps on the camera - it's quite sensible to use the cheaper 1/4" for residential usage --- the issue of light sensitivity is negated, because the lamps will come on when the light is too low. 10,000 Hr life span on an led unit is almost half the expected life span for LED lamps --- another way of telling you when the camera burns out after 3 months, that the LED's need to be replaced and aren't covered by warranty. 3.6mm lens will give you the minimum accepted image for surveillance up to around 45ft, at best you will be able to get some id of a person at about 7-8Ft - but with 12 LED's you could work on the safe assumption of 7-8 ft of illumination in a decently reflective situation. Obviously as far as the cameras are concerned, in both cases your are buying cheap --- the Costco cameras will not do what they claim to. AS your consideration might be based on price - buy the cheapest one, because both are basically gimmicks. The Swann system will work for you if you don't really want to see anything significant beyond 15ft.

What version of ie are you using?

I would rather not describe the full details, suffice to say that it involved dealership issues - with no control over cross selling into markets, and availability on the chinese market, we eventually started buying this cheaper from a Chinese market vendor ERT Technology than what Dahua was giving to their dealers. Of course shortly thereafter they dropped their prices significantly and when Chinese vendors in our market as well as European distributors of the brand started cross selling into our markets as well. In our industry, one of the reasons why our network model and group purchasing process has worked is because , Integrators cannot get by competing against the same brand in their own markets, when a product meets the saturation phase in it's growth path any 50 different installers in one town are competing for 10% margin on the same brand. - if the distribution channel is not controlled. In that case you find integrator loyalty to the brand tested by their dwindling margins.

But you said the DVR cost $400? Ofcourse can always get a DVR from amazon, I had a SuperDVR 4-ch USB DVR that only cost me $6! its in the trash now though for obvious reasons Well that was just an aside --- I incorrectly assumed that the poster wanted to see what other cheap images looked like, i didn't think he wanted to put together the cheapest possible system. The price of the DVR didn't really contribute specifically to the issue.

I thought you wanted a budget system LOL?? I don't know if Netvision is suitable for the scale of project -- but what attracted me to the netvision offering is that fact that when Hikvision needed software development, they turned to Netvision --- when Dahua started to develop DVR cards, in an effort to compete with Hikvision - they too also turned to Netvision. The netvision system is stable it's cheap and while it's not going to perform miracles, it does work. I did try the linovision offering a few years backs - also on the back of the linux option without license fees , but we where not impressed with it at that time---it has apparently improved since then. The only drawback with netvision is that they only support the more well known DVR card manufacturers from China, they won't support what they consider the lower end manufacturers. One route that we looked into was getting our developers to do some heavy modding on zoneminder, as that is a basic platform (open source) for the cheaper ebay type cards. If one doesn't have access to their own developers - there are some really good people in the freelance scene that will make zoneminder do what you want it to do, in the way you need.

We utilized and where the official representatives for Dahua in South Africa from around 2004. Our entire network was fully versed and cut their teeth on Dahua DVR's - as the standalone was hardly mainstream at that time in 2004 , here. We switched to TVT to fill that portion of our lower - mid end applications around December 2010, and our entire network made the switch as well. We haven't had any negative feedback about the TVT dvr's and I quite confidently say, that our network integrators are well qualified to comment on the one versus the other. Just as when we started with Dahua back in 2004, and we battled to get to grips with the market - as they specifically targeted mid end installations. Eventually we had them develop entry level models and the brand took off from there. In similar fashion there are some small issues that we are discussing with TVT to have them adapt for our market and I am confident that this brand, in that market segment will perform well. One thing that gets a lot of compliments is the mobile phone apps - especially the supercam app from the apple app store. As we where very used to the dahua product with a RMA of under 2% that was a critical factor for us - and we where given sufficient evidence of a global 1.86% RMA for TVT DVR's. Price wise there is very little to seperate them and performance wise, each has it's benefits and disadvantages over the other. Another area in which our users have complimented, is the extremely easy to use interface of the TVT DVR's --- we always thought the Dahua unit had a user friendly interface, until we started to get the comments about how user friendly the TVT DVR interface is. In the real budget end with SE series, that market really likes the slim, small form factor.

LOL - it's quite late here --- so i got it wrong again, missed the analog part ------ heavens, we'll try another day!

Yes looks like they actually based PSS 4.xx off of DSS ... but DSS still has its considerable differences which is interesting .. not sure what application it would be needed for really but its fun to play with. I guess something like a national chain of stores is where it would come in handy. The old PSS was called EPSS, I have download link on my site. Although it might look a little less professional its a TINY program at only 6MB download compared to PSS 4.01 at 15MB or PSS 4.04 at 30MB, and it has a much faster GUI. The DSS has functionality for media servers, and a whole spattering of features which make it suitable for a major corporation running multiple DVR's at multiple locations--- probably making sense from around 100 dvr's or more.

Ok sorry, I misunderstood the question, I thought you specifically wanted to compare cheap images. This is an image from the fibridge cameras we are using - 15fps UXGA (1080p) This is the same camera running at 720p While there is a big jump from the bottom end to the higher end ------- with the right lens, both can achieve the same objective from a security or operational requirement perspective. I should just mention that I had to convert this video from the native video format to mp4 for the sake of capturing an image with my screen capture utility

Not really!

Before we stopped dealing with Dahua we had remote control offsite monitoring centers running completely with the Dahua PSS systems - the PSS comes free with every DVR, and at one stage they had an enterprise version which we could license at Around $1000 and some fee per channel ---- I think just before we stopped dealing with them they replaced the enterprise version with the new DSS version. At the time it was viewed as one of the better CMS of it's time.

something local to the system it's being viewed on -because we got exceptionally crisp images on our iPhone with the same dvr's.

The latest firmware updates from TVT now support viewing on safari as well as ie9 !

If you use the Dahua LE-AS it would be even cheaper BTW ... this is the cheapest, all used old broken cameras brought back to life . even the IR in camera 3 was an old Extreme CCTV EX26LED that was thought to have been struck by lightning and was on the way to the trash (otherwise that area is almost pitch dark). and a demo DVR .. basically everything was 100% free including the old 2nd hand PC I use to watch it remotely from .. and im recording over the network so i dont even need a hard drive in the DVR as its using the old one on this old PC Last I checked the Dahua LE-AS was available from the manufacturer around $57-65 for a 4 channel - the cost of this 16 channel - which again is not what we normally use, is significantly below the cost of the 1604LE-A/S series and as you can see it's real 420TV line cameras --- which are also obsolete standards in our area of the woods!!

how do you know ? Well, I meant the cheapest setup in our array --- of course I could have got a $40 dvr and put these cameras on there. But i thought the question was asking for comparative images in the price range. I wasn't using my cost price - i was using our resale price - and specifically wasn't aiming to demonstrate high quality, or $40 dvr's --- This 16 channel isn't the brand we normally represent and neither is it the cameras we normally use --- I thought the poster wanted to get a realistic comparison of low end devices ----- Just to add - not one of the cameras on my sheet have more than 12 Leds. I think this is a realistic comparison for low end ----cams where snapped over the network, not live view. --- if going into further detail, the dvr has searchable onboard pos, gps, smart searching and a number of features not available on the Dahua DVR --- but then this is just a cheapie which we keep around basically for some low end POS applications.