Need recommendation on 8ch DVR monitoring lab rats

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Hi there,

 

I'm a life scientist that's pretty new in this field. Our lab is looking for a 8 channel DVR that is reliable and easy to use to continuously monitor rodent behavior for 3 days. We've tried bundles like Lorex before and it has completely failed us. Therefore, I need your recommendations on a solid DVR. I have searched through the past articles and have concluded either an Avermedia or an Intellicam system will suite best for our need. Our budget is around $1500.

Which model will you recommend us? (We are based in the US.) And if there are good candidates other than these two, could you also generously recommend it for us?

 

Some of our requirements will be:

1. Recording resolution: highest resolution (720 x 480 NTSC) with 30fps per channel (recording) for all 8 channels (or at least 4 channels)

2. Easily viewable over the network. Our computers are mixed between PCs and Macs so it is crucial that it can be remotely accessed by these 2 systems. (Prefer without any proprietary software installation.)

3. Easily downloadable from the network into mpeg4 or h.264(preferred) file format with no file size restraint. (Our previous returned Lorex crashed the video file everytime when the file gets larger than 2GB!)

4. Easily downloadable from DVR to USB flash drive or USB HDD without storage size restraint.

5. Fast download speed either over the network or from the USB port for the recorded videos stored (3days).

6. Would a DVD writer be useful for our situation? And anything else I should also be aware of?

 

Thanks a bunch for your help and knowledge! I'm glad that I've found this forum!!

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Sean