iFCS_GUY

err, most provide fairly decent images over the internet. budget would be a nice thing to know, but, coming in under the geovision card in price, there's a lot to be had! embedded 4 channel units like the iFCS LITE 4 CIF unit, or the PACOM's do nice remote viewing, DM's stuff is a lot more expensive, but, also scales a lot better too!

why not just use black & white cameras, much cheaper and you can spend more of your budget on the DVR! you could use a token cheap colour only camera to ensure you know that someone's wearing a red jacket or a black jacket, but, for ID-ing people on a budget, etc, just go with B&W , for lighting at night, pick up a few real cheap 'bullet' cameras with IR LED's in, and don't hook up the video feeds, just use them as IR illuminators!!

No, you can not replace PATA (IDE) with SATA they are two totally different systems, IDE is the big wide connector (Parallel ATA) SATA is the small connector (Serial ATA) serial ATA is newer, faster and lower processor overhead, I've found that DVR's using SATA do outperform PATA ones when streaming data!