ATV Falcon FA 120

[Graybar Glen 0]

Any experience with this one? I won't be asking too much of it- No remote viewing/networking.

Glen

[JMANOFNVS 0]

For the cost I would buy something else.

[Graybar Glen 0]

County government is buying, so cost is not a big issue. What tipped me over to this one is the 4 discrete channels of audio recording. I will be recording 4 microphones in the booking area of the county jail, and being able to playback an individual audio channel with it's associated camera could be a big advantage. CDRW archiving is also a big plus. I've used some ATV quads in the past, and they seemed well engineered for the money. I'm wondering if this DVR is a good performer also.

 

Edit: The model I'm looking at is the FA4-120

Glen

[JMANOFNVS 0]

Don't get me wrong there equipment isn't bad just the DVR's are a little expensive for what they are. The audio will eat that HD up quik. Will you be recording 4 different booking rooms and thats why you need 4 audio inputs? There are several 4ch dvr's with 4 ch's of audio. Louroe is what alot of my customers use for audio in that type of install, they use various type's of recording though. Are you going to want the video and audio to be in sync?

[Graybar Glen 0]

Yes, there are 4 separate rooms. There are 2 existing mics on the Male side and Female side main areas, and the Sheriff needs to include 1 more room on each side for a total of 4. I have specified Louroe Verifact mics and a base station for the additions. Ideally, the video and audio would be in sync. I know audio will take up a lot of disk space, and that's why I also wanted CD archiving and VMD capability.

Currently, there are two separate systems for the different sides. On the Female side, I installed a Panasonic WV HD100 DVR set to record at 1 fps until VMD triggered, then it goes to 10 fps w/audio recording. This setup has worked well for the last couple years, though the 40g hard drive only gives us about 3 wks before it records over itself. The Male side has an older system that was installed before I hired on, consisting of a TLVCR and outboard audio amps. I figured I could consolidate the AV surveillance into one system that would be smaller and much easier for the duty Sergeants to operate and archive.

[JMANOFNVS 0]

So are you a Police Officer or Installer or both?

[Graybar Glen 0]

I work for county Facilities Management. Afscme skilled trades unit.

[JMANOFNVS 0]

Check out Samsung SHR-2042 and Arm Electronics DVR480GCD here are some links

http://www.samsungcc.tv/Portals/0/GVIProductImages/369/SHR-2042%20spec%20sheet.pdf

 

http://www.armelectronics.com/web/pdf/digrecord/DVR480GCD.pdf

[cycattani 0]

The Falcon uses MPEG-4 compression which has three times the storage

as most of the cheaper brands. I was up against a competitor who used

the Falcon and the quality was much better than the unit I used. Also

the Falcon was able to be adjusted for lighting during playback and gave

more frames/second for the same speed I used on my unit. Buy it !!!!!!!

[JMANOFNVS 0]

Both of those dvr's I mentioned use mpeg 4 as well, you should check them out they are alot less expensive then the falcon.

[Graybar Glen 0]

I have to admit that the Falcon had already been ordered the day of my OP.

I figured if you guys threw up any serious red flags, I could return it without much trouble. Since it appears that there aren't any real performance issues, and the cost difference isn't that important to county government, I let the order stand. ($500.00 is lunch money for these folks!) The DVR is on my workbench, and I have been playing with it for a couple days now. I REALLY appreciate your experience and your input, and in the future I'll check with this forum BEFORE I make any major purchases I'm not sure of! Thanks again!