Costco Q-See 8 Channel NVR QC828-8C9-2

[repsol223 0]

Just noticed a new Q-See at Costco:

http://www.costco.com/Q-See-8-Channel-HD-NVR-Security-System-with-2TB-HDD-and-8-1080p-IP-Cameras.product.100069855.html

 

They also have this one with PTZ:

http://www.costco.com/Q-See-8-Channel-HD-NVR-Security-System-with-2TB-HDD-and-3-1080P-IP-Cameras-and-1-PTZ-(3x)-Camera.product.100069861.html

 

Anyone have any info or reviews on the QC828 NVR? Looks like Q-See's website hasn't been updated... or is this some model number for Costco only?

 

Thanks.

[leonard009 0]

I contacted Q-see about the QC828 NVR. They said is it initially a Costco exclusive.

 

The user manual is on their site.

[buellwinkle 0]

It's about time they made an NVR with 8 PoE ports, sort of weird before when they had 8 channels but only 4 PoE.

[repsol223 0]

The user manual is on their site.

 

The Costco site links to the QC808 manual. I don't see a specific manual for the QC828 on Q-See's website.

 

I am curious what else has changed, other than the 8 POE ports vs the 4 on the QC808. I may give them a call when I get some free time.

[repsol223 0]

Ok, I talked to Q-See. The only changes on the QC828 vs QC808 are:

-8 port POE vs 4 port POE

-30 FPS vs 15 FPS

 

Confirmed the software is all the same.

[thmaxxer 0]

Anyone have this system? Either the one with PTZ or the 8 1080P package?

[shockwave199 0]

If you need 8 channels and like all poe built in, that's one hell of a steal of deal right there. Personally, the ptz package would not be right for me. That ptz just isn't up to snuff for day/night outdoor. But 1,500 for 8 2mp cameras and an 8 channel/8 poe nvr with 100' cables- that's awesome. Makes me tempted to grab one.

 

I've used a qsee analog dvr and I only have a few negative observations and whether they would carry over to their nvr systems I don't know. Their CMS software mostly wasn't great. It had bugs that were never attended to and different dvr firmwares could actually make the software not work for you. And q-see just blew me off, saying sorry- we only tested it with windows 7. Imagine that? Insane. So, I'd be a bit concerned about the CMS software for this nvr and try and find out as much as I could about it. Only one other thing, is that the mouse on both my qsee dvr's was terrible. I don't mean just a cheap mouse, which it is, but it actually didn't work well. No small thing because 1, no other good mouse was compatible and 2, the mouse is literally the thing you use to navigate the system. You don't use the remote, you use and NEED a functioning mouse. So yeah, no small thing. And again, I have no idea how the mouse is with these things. Other than that, q-see customer service is mediocre. You often get pointed to documentation, chat people are quick to write you off, and phone help is very tough. They are a huge outfit- it's best to know what you're doing on your own with IP systems.

 

Other than that....hmmm. Nice freakin deal here!

[shockwave199 0]

The other okay thing is 2tb hard drive included. It makes the package quite a deal overall. However, I would really consider a 4tb drive the minimum for a system such as this, if you're gonna record full bore and the cameras are outdoor mounted. In that scenario, with a 2tb drive, you're probably looking at 2 weeks archive max, if you're lucky. The thing with nvr boxes is to max out the hard drive to the biggest one you can afford and when you can afford it, max it out.

[MaxIcon 0]

If you run all the cams at 4096 kb/s, which is a reasonable bit rate for 1080p at 10-15 fps, and record full time, here's what you'd get:

 

4096 kb/s = 512 kB/s/camera

8 cameras = 4096 kB/s or 4.1 MB/sec

4.1 MB/sec = 246 MB/min = 14.8 GB/hr = 354 GB/day

Assume 1.8 TB available on a 2 TB drive, you'd get about 5 days with 24 hr recording.

Bumping to 4 TB would roughly double that.

 

With motion detect, it would depend on how often motion was detected and how long the recording continued after detection.

 

If you dropped the frame rate, you could get by with a lower bit rate, and would get more time.

[repsol223 0]

The system seems pretty good for the price. With Costco's warranty/return policy, I may just purchase in a couple of weeks and give it a try. I was stuck between getting this, and the Lorex 6 camera system from Costco. I am leaning towards this since the Lorex cameras seem to get poor QC reviews.

[JoeyJoey 0]

The Qsee models export their video in a non-standard format, where as the Lorex/Swann use mp4.

[shockwave199 0]

Huh, didn't realize qsee nvr's used PSS. That's a good thing. Glad to know that.

[zikronix 0]

I wonder how these cameras perform compared to the hikvision cameras. I get the impression the rebreanded hikvisions (which can be flashed to 3MP) are a better deal than the dahua rebrands

[leonard009 0]

The user manual is on their site.

 

The Costco site links to the QC808 manual. I don't see a specific manual for the QC828 on Q-See's website.

 

I am curious what else has changed, other than the 8 POE ports vs the 4 on the QC808. I may give them a call when I get some free time.

 

http://qsee.custhelp.com/ci/fattach/get/151596/1379353385/redirect/1/filename/QC%20NVR%20Manual%20v2-5_web.pdf

 

Page 16

[Sifter 0]

Sams Club has a deal posted now with the same NVR for $699.

 

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/qsee-8x4-720p-ip-secrty-dvr-bullt-cam/prod10700191.ip?navAction=

[AaronHolio 0]

Sams Club has a deal posted now with the same NVR for $699.http://www.samsclub.com/sams/qsee-8x4-720p-ip-secrty-dvr-bullt-cam/prod10700191.ip?navAction=

Older slower model with 720p cameras. Not the 8 camera 1080p on the Costco deal.

 

If you run all the cams at 4096 kb/s, which is a reasonable bit rate for 1080p at 10-15 fps, and record full time, here's what you'd get:

 

4096 kb/s = 512 kB/s/camera

8 cameras = 4096 kB/s or 4.1 MB/sec

4.1 MB/sec = 246 MB/min = 14.8 GB/hr = 354 GB/day

Assume 1.8 TB available on a 2 TB drive, you'd get about 5 days with 24 hr recording.

Bumping to 4 TB would roughly double that.

 

With motion detect, it would depend on how often motion was detected and how long the recording continued after detection.

 

If you dropped the frame rate, you could get by with a lower bit rate, and would get more time.

 

Not exactly true. Due to the compression method, recording all cameras non-stop does not mean they have a fixed bit rate. I have 6+ months of 4 720 cameras recorded on my 4 720p camera system because while it may save a frame per second to the HD when little to nothing changes, it only records full bit rate to the HD when there is motion.

 

Basically the difference in this system is, they boosted the broadcom chip that does the mp4 decoding from the cameras, and possibly used a better main ARM processor. In any case, whenever Q-See states 30FPS, you can actually expect about 20fps. My QC804, at best gets 15-20fps with all 4 cameras displaying via HDMI monitor. If Q-See where a more robust company, they would put a little head room in. So instead of this having 240FPS @ 1080p, they could have rounded up to 300FPS and really had a solid product.

 

So what this product release means is that we will likely see a 16 channel 480FPS 16-PoE port system around October-December of 2014. Likely to be around $2000.

 

Tip for you all on Android, buy IP Cam Viewer Pro on Good Play market. It is $4 and far more stable and functional that the crap Q-See makes available. Their PC PSS software is absolute junk. CMS doesn't work for crap. And their web interface only works in Internet Explorer AFTER you turn off ActiveX filtering in your security tab of IE. If you use FireFox, install IE Tab Plugin 4.x and add your site to always open using IE engine and it should work ok. If Q-See was a decent company, these NVR units would work in any browser. They could at a minimum release a add-on for FireFox and Chrome.

 

That being said, this isn't too bad of a deal since they upgraded the HD to 2TB and the cameras to 1080p. Another thing that is VERY important, the camera lens is 65-70 degrees view. The 720p cameras were only 45 deg. Which makes covering an area that is close to your camera very limited.

[AaronHolio 0]

I'm ordering a system this week before the sale goes off on Costco.com. Note this is a one month deal with about 2.5 weeks left. Before taking it to the install site I'm going to fully set it up here at home and make SURE it is really doing 240FPS on all 8 channels @ 1080P. If not, back to Costco it will go. I really wish they had the 16 channel 480FPS 1080p system already. That is really what we need. So what we'll likely do is install this one, wait till late next year when the new 16 channel version comes out, buy it and swap the 8 channel to my house and put the 16 channel at our business site.

[AaronHolio 0]

I don't have time yet to write a really good review. But I can say the QC828 does do a decent job at handling 8 1080 cameras at once. It has been upgraded to Web Server 3.0 which is a HUGE improvement over the Web Service 2.0 piece of junk. You have to remember to go into Internet explorer and turn off active filtering for the sites you want to use it with or nothing will work.

 

However I still wasn't happy. 240FPS really means you get about 20-25fps per camera and it still doesn't pack the horse power that they could have spent an extra $15 bucks adding. Luckily I found a Dauha reseller

(ok for some reason I can't post a the URL here????, so the web address spread out) n e l l e y s s e c u r i t y . com

...and ended up going with their 32 camera 8 PoE port Dahua model (Remember Q-see is just repackaged Dahua equipment stripped to be the cheapest. So I ended up paying a bit more from N e l l y and getting the manly version of the device. I put 2 4TB drives in it and it is handling all the live data I can feed it without dropping a frame. It even supports 3 and 5 megapixel cameras very well.. Its limit is 160mbit of total throughput, so think of it this way. a 720p 1.3mp camera runs around 6mbit, a 1080p 2.0mp camera does about 8-9mbit, and 3mp does between 10-12mbit. I've displayed 20 1080p cameras and 1 3mp camera on a 1080p 50" LED TV and it is utterly beautiful. Clear as a bell. So I'm going to sell my QC804 and QC828 and go with the EySurv-ESDV-NVR-32-32-channel-nvr with 8 PoE ports. I bought a 16 port PoE ethernet switch and will leave the on board PoE ports empty because I prefer to have my cameras all on the local LAN so I can hit their web interface and make custom changes that the NVR doesn't really allow you do to. Then you just go into remote devices and find the 1080p cams on the LAN side and adopt that as you wish. I've discovered that allowing all your cameras to get DHCP addresses doesn't always work out for the best, so I set my router to stop offering DHCP addresses above 192.168.0.199 - then hard setting the NVR to .200 and each camera .201 .202 .203 etc so in case your router ever loses a DHCP lease, you'll have them all manually set and easy to adopt in the remote devices section of the NVR.

 

I was so glad that Ryan at n e l l y s security sent me an email after reading one of my posts on youtube complaining as to why Dahua produces high end versions, but Q-See puts out the wimpiest 3 year old models. I finally have the NVR I want and will be installing it for 3 more of my clients in the coming months. While you still can get the Dahua (Q-see) 1080p cameras for a little cheaper from Costco, you can get HikVision 3mp cameras from n e l l y for cheaper, which do work with the Dahua NVR pretty well. Personally I'm looking forward to the 5mp cameras.. The 3mp is a definite improvement over the 2mp 1080p models, but your frame rate will drop to 20fps unless you put them in 1080p mode - which is still a bonus because it does provide a cleaner and more crisp picture.

 

Thew views I'm getting off these units is spectacular. N e l l y s secutiry They are very helpful and they don't wait around like Q-See to release the good stuff. Very responsive and helpful with great advice. So I'm gonna sell my QC804 and QC828.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Guest

[shockwave199 0]

you can get HikVision 3mp cameras from . for cheaper, which do work with the Dahua NVR pretty well.

Define pretty well. What are the shortcomings? I'm interested to know. I've been eyeing that unit for a long time, but I would use the on board poe.

[AaronHolio 0]

I did buy one of the HiKvision 3mp cameras and it seems to work fine with the 32 channel Dahua model I got from n e l l y security .com, I think there may only be a couple camera attributes that you can't control from the Dahua interface but I'm not certain yet. For that you can login via the web interface. The picture quality is really clear. You can tell the crisp difference between it and the 1080p (2mp) Dahua cameras.

 

I actually bought a 16 port Trendnet gbit PoE switch http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E3441IG/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 to put everyone on my LAN (which is the NVR's WAN side) so I can directly connect to them via web browser and do more detailed configuration. HiK has more mature software for controlling the camera as well as a pretty decent Software based NVR recording suite. However I prefer a dedicated device managing/recording my cameras vs a PC.

[shockwave199 0]

Does the hik do motion recording while imported into the NVR? I've heard that is a problem- that it will only record full time and not respond to motion recording via the NVR.

[AaronHolio 0]

Does the hik do motion recording while imported into the NVR? I've heard that is a problem- that it will only record full time and not respond to motion recording via the NVR.

Shockwave, I will have to check. Right now I have the 32 channel system all prepped to an install .. In other words everything lying on a floor and I have all cameras record all the time but also flag motion events for flagging.

[home2wa 0]

Purchased the system from Costco. These were my observations:

Pros:

- Cameras produced high quality video with accurate colors, high contrast. Unlike analog systems, it was easy to recognize someone's face, even 50' or even farther away. I could actually clearly see what I was looking at, at least during the day. Resolution appeared somewhat reduced during the night.

- NVR software allowed for very detailed scheduling of operating modes.

- Option to install additional SATA hard drive of up to 4TB, all prewired and ready to go.

 

Cons:

- The night after installation of the cameras six out of seven cameras had severe condensation on the inner face of the glass right in front of the camera lens, blinding them. Q-See support asked me to take all cameras down for warming up indoors, then to reinstall them. Made no sense as they had been on indoor temperature before installation. To get the moisture out of the cameras I unscrewed the O-Ring sealed front housing with the glass unit, then dried the cameras for several hours over heating vents. One of these cameras still formed condensation on the inside several hours after mounting them back outdoors. Suspect moisture saturated desiccant pack inside camera cases. Took half a day of labor.

- Motion sensing worked well at night. Despite masking areas of frequent motion, during daytime the NVR showed motion detection on all channels almost continuously, recording all day, no matter the sensitivity setting. That created an enormous amount of footage, filling up the hard drive in a matter of days, even at just 10 fps. My old analog C1 resolution Q-See system was much more reliable in motion detection. It could hold video footage for half a year from 8 cameras on a 500GB HDD. This system filled its 2 TB drive in about a week, then started overwriting. The problem appeared to lie with a quirk of the cameras. The feed from each camera went unsharp about every other second almost throughout the entire frame, severely pixelating the image. Then it sharpened up again. I watched this effect triggering the motion sensing feature of the NVR. Q-See customer service declared it a glitch in the NVR, asking me to send it in for replacement.

- No watertight seal between ethernet connector and receptacle on cameras. Was concerned that moisture might corrode contacts over time.

- Glitchy OS behavior: was hard to reliably select short motion events on the graphical timeline. Replay of all eight channels simultaneously did not reliably show footage recorded on all channels. It did so when limiting replay to max. four channels at a time. OS does not reliably switch between multi camera window or single camera window display modes on mouse clicks.

- Software not designed for consumers, means it is not very intuitive or particularly user-friendly. Seemed very flexible, though, allowing finely tuned surveillance scheduling and response programming.

- Due to large number of motion detections, email alerts for motion events was useless. Would have flooded inbox daily.

- Annoying high pitched noise from fan on CPU heat sink. Too loud to keep NVR in office.

- Not intuitive how to save configuration of camera windows to my choosing

- One camera had cable insulation trimmed too short at connector, exposing the wires inside.

 

I very much wanted to like this system. The video quality was far superior to anything analog. Unfortunately, with these issues the system was useless to me for home surveillance. Without reliable motion detection, I'd have to review an enormous amount of footage every day to find out what went on around the house in my absence. The excessive amount of data generated every day filled up the hard drive fast. During multi-week absences footage would be lost due to hard drive overwriting.

 

After spending dozens of hours dealing with the glitches of this system, I returned it to Costco. I replaced it with an analog Q-See 8 camera D1 system with QT DVR, at a quarter of the cost. It works very well. Much quieter, good enough resolution, reliably working motion detection, user friendly operation. Will take months to fill the 500 GB hard drive.

[Tul9033 0]

What did you guys pay for the Costco bundle? It's showing $1599 now.

Thanks