CottyGee

Yes it absolutely IS helpful! My only experience with DVRs is using them to record TV, and knowing from that experience that they represent a QUANTUM LEAP in usefulness... I can only assume the "leap" is of similar magnatude with surveillance DVRs as it is with DVRs for television. What I am missing tho is real world experience. That is, with the right camera, will the LTA provide sufficient recorded playback to allow facial recognition of a known individual in my situation? My "situation" is two 75-watt "coach lights" shining onto my driveway, and incidents happening in the dark of night. Driveway is about 20'X30' wide, with the camera shooting from about 15 feet away from the edge of the driveway. I only really need to hit somewhere around the middle of the driveway I think. Obviously, nobody can promise anything about what my real world results will be. But an educated guess puts me leaps and bounds ahead of where I'm at now - which is more or less a blind stab in the dark! So, what say ye?

Brand isn't important to me either! (I've been burned on too many a product that was burning up their good name...) If you know of a Sanyo that you think beats the G4-LTA H.264 DVR that mr.surveillance suggested, I'd like to hear about it. I'm pretty impressed with what I've learned about the G4-LTA... That said, if there's something that would serve my needs better, I'm all ears! Thanks to all that have responded so far. Keep it comin'!

Thanks for the replies. Warranty isn't that important to me. Quality is more important than warranty! Days of recording... Well, initially, the only thing I imagined needing is yesterday. Then I thought, ure, maybe a week might be nice. (I suppose it could be a week before I noticed that a kid bashed in our coach lights (again).) I tend to notice things like the car getting egged right away! I suppose it would be nice to go on vacation and if (heaven forbid) anything happened while we were gone, it would be nice to have a record of it. So I dunno... mr.surveillance - The H.264 compression is supposed to be REALLY good stuff, right?? Like DVD quality? I looked at the MSRP, and it certainly seems like the best deal I've seen - recorded images should be VERY high quality, yes? This unit looks promising!

Well, this is part of my concern. I'm not sure I have many options with regard to camera placement. Right now, I'm capturing most of my 20 foot x 30 foot wide driveway, from about 15 feet up, aimed "down" at roughly a 45º angle (maybe a tad less). Yeah - I think it likely that we would recognize whoever it is - it's likely a kid from the high school my son attends. If my son didn't recognize the kid, one of the neighbor's kids likely would. It looks to me like the AverMedia is quite a bit more expensive than the AVTech/CPCam. Knowing "you get what you pay for", but not wanting to pay for what I don't/won't need - what do I get with the AverMedia unit vs. the AVTechs? PS - love the screen name!