Digivue PCI DVR card?

[fas 0]

A friend asked me to set up nanny cams in his home. He wants them hidden in 3 or 4 rooms. I recommended either motion detector cams or smoke alarm cams, and a dvr. I am going to do the job for a few hundred over cost of materials. He came to me today after "researching" (he knows very little about cctv) and wants me to install the Digivue DIGIVUE 60fps card in his own pc, and use that as the dvr, because he thinks that's all he needs and it will save a lot of money. I told him it's not a good idea, for many reasons.

His pc is more than ample to handle the dvr part on it's own, but he also uses the pc for home use, internet, work, etc.

 

Here is my question:

 

1. Can this be done and work (will he be happy)?

2. I looked up the DIGIVUE cards of which I am not familiar (are they any good?) and noticed they sell a 16 cam card with 240 fps relatively inexpensive compared to geo. Can they be any good being that much cheaper? Thanks.

[CollinR 0]

Almost anything that will function reliably at all will suit his use. I'm stuck on Geo and I would do a 250-4 without thinking.

 

My bigger concern would be coverage of the house. You gotta make it where its somewhat hard to avoid them. You don't need to identify the nanny you already know, all he needs to really see is actions. Don't get me wrong fps is a big deal with action, just this situation is special. If you have 4 cams in 4 rooms 1 kid and 1 nanny there should never be more then 2 cams going at the same time, thats 7.5fps x2. Not bad at all for the $. Alot of people don't do the math that way but if the DVR can load balance thats what you get.

[fas 0]

Dont you think it would be cheapest and best to get a decent budget dvr? Anyway, back to my other question: The DIGIVUE Digivue PCI DVR card 16ch with 240fps. Does anyone have any experience with this card? The fps is not bad, and the price is really inexpensive. I'm just wondering if it's junk. Thanks.

[rory 0]

I took out a Digivue a while back and replaced it for something else, IMO its not that great, you can probably get a Geo Card for the same price and even if you get the slower fps like the GV250 at least you know its a stable card and decent software. Fas are you a dealer (in the dealer section?) and do you use the Geo or other cards?

[fas 0]

Rory,

 

I am not a dealer. I am kind of new to all of this, and you are right, I think the geo card is not too much more than the Digivue, but does the geo card have 15fps per camera, or 15 fps total?

[rory 0]

they say 15fps but i get at least 25fps out of it .. cause with 2 cameras they then look like 15fps . in fact the AVI files register as 30fps in the properties.

For 8 cameras I would go with the GV650 and more than 8 cameras, the GV-800.

[fas 0]

The Digivue 16ch card has 240 fps total. I saw it for less than $400. I think the geo card that is comparable is a lot more than that.

[rory 0]

Yeah well you get what you pay for with DVR cards, or moreso the software. Eclipse is cheap to and Ive used them, and I wouldnt again, simply I would use the slower Geo card first.

[fas 0]

I know, Rory, that's why I wanted to know if anyone had any experience with it. It's only good if it works. There is a huge difference in fps though, 15 compared to 1.25 for 16 cameras. But, if no one used them, then that tells you something.

[rory 0]

Smart Motion Detection ... works well on the slower cards.

 

if you have a 480fps card and 16 cameras but only 1 or 2 are picking up motion at a time and you are recording on Motion Event, then that was a waste of dollars

[CollinR 0]

they say 15fps but i get at least 25fps out of it .. cause with 2 cameras they then look like 15fps . in fact the AVI files register as 30fps in the properties.

For 8 cameras I would go with the GV650 and more than 8 cameras, the GV-800.

 

 

100% agree, when I bought my first 250 I thought for sure it said 30 fps.

[Jasper 0]

If you can get 5-7fps per camera that is great. You really don't need any faster than that for most applications. And it can be slower depending on what you are trying to monitor.

 

30fps with 16 cameras would need a tremendous amount of hard drive space to store a weeks worth of video. And that is with the highest compression available. I am reffering to the GeoVison card in this example.

[rory 0]

750GB in a 13cam 640x480 GV1480 app i have ...9 days recording ...

[Old Salt 0]

IMHO, Digivue isn't worth the money. Just returned their DVR card for an upgrade. Get this... My system is Athlon 64 3400+, 2 gig Ram, Radeon ATI 256meg AGP, with separate 120 gig and 70 gig HD. Built it myself, should be good for most applications, right?

I install the EDV-XV425 DIGIVUE PCI 4 channel in my last remaining PCI slot, fire it up and .... nada. I check all the gizmos and gadgets and decide it's time to call them up. Ok, here's the punchline... In their exact words....Oh, it's your video card...you need to downgrade to a 32 meg video card to make it work... Seems the "Software Engineers" put little to no effort in their attempt to create some sort of working program for this card...and forget about trying any other software with this card. The onboard chip is the xview?.... won't find a thing out there that is compatible...no other drivers that I've found will support this chip.

So's I pulls out the Digivue, packs it back up and takes it back to the store with my personal recommendation that the remove all Digivue products from their shelves.

So, my personal recommendation is stay as far away as possible from Digivue. If you want to stick with the inexpensive/reliable products, you may try out the Swann PC DVR 4 card. I snatched it up for about $90 US and it works like a champ. Only thing I'm not too impressed with about this one is the single audio input is connected via your mic input. Other than that, the software is reliable and it has all the wizbangs any other entry level card will have for a fair price.

[uscpsycho 0]

If you want to stick with the inexpensive/reliable products, you may try out the Swann PC DVR 4 card. I snatched it up for about $90 US and it works like a champ. Only thing I'm not too impressed with about this one is the single audio input is connected via your mic input. Other than that, the software is reliable and it has all the wizbangs any other entry level card will have for a fair price.

 

Works like a champ? I tried the Swann PCDVR4 card and have some serious issues with it. Maybe you can shed some light on this:

 

1) The email alert does not work. I entered in all my email information correctly but the test emails fail (it actually worked once). So for testing purposes I set up a local email server on my machine and it NEVER sends an email alert no matter how much motion is detected. Can you get the email alerts to work?

 

2) It supposedly records 30fps. But it is not balanced, so if you only use 1 or 2 cameras you get 7fps max per camera. Can you find a way to get more than 7fps from any camera?

 

3) Motion Holding Time, as defined in the POOR documentation, is how long motion must be detected before recording begins. The minimum you can set this to is 10 seconds. That's absurd. Regardless, the feature doesn't work because even if set to 10 seconds it starts to record immediately -- so if you did want a 10 second delay you're out of luck.

 

4) The documentation reads as if it were written in another language and translated to English with an automated application. Also, some features are not described.

 

There are other problems I experienced. But those were the major ones. If I can get the email to work I will give it another chance.