Night Owl 8 Camera (1080p) System from Costco 5MP

[Wailer Mon 0]

Excellent in theory, but very poor execution. I bought my system at Costco. After living with the system for about three months, these are MY personal observations. Keep in mind that of my eight cameras, five have over-lapping fields of view with at least one other camera. My first DVR was defective and kept re-booting at random times. Night Owl replaced it, and I had high expectations that would solve several critical issues. Sadly, it only solved the rebooting issue, not the rest noted below . . .

 

THE GOOD: Excellent quality clear picture from all 8 wired cameras. Works well in daylight or nighttime. Wide field of view, but not too wide to miss smaller details. . Display of camera picture can be viewed individually (full screen), 4 at a time, 8 at a time with one enlarged (your choice), or 8 at a time (all the same size), or slide show sequenced. Great flexibility in setup for full-time recording, motion-activated recording, length of recording, masking of field of view areas for motion that you do not want to set off recording (traffic on a street for example). All frames are date/time stamped. The android app works fairly well with reasonable latency.

 

THE BAD: The interface takes some getting used to, and not very intuitive. The included instructions are not much help with operational details, though there are instructions online, at the Night Owl website that are a bit better. You will fare best just playing with the controls to understand what they do and how to use them. The much larger problems are listed below:

 

1) There are distinct "holes" in the recorded coverage by the DVR. They are RANDOM and will end recording pre-maturely, despite continued motion by vehicles, people or animals directly in the field of view. Even with motion detection unmasked for full screen coverage, it often starts motion-detected recordings late, partially records an event, or completely misses the triggered event all together. I have repeatedly tested and witnessed this with all eight cameras. The single worst problem with this system is that it misses events happening right in front of the camera. This is entirely random. It also makes this system nearly worthless as a surveillance system.

 

2) The DVR (for the most part) is only recording from one camera at a time. This is problematic when more than one camera has coverage of the same scene from different angles. I HAVE noticed occasional overlap of two camera's recording at the same time, but it is rare, and usually only for a few seconds at the beginning or end of a scene. If there is an event triggered by an animal, say, on one side of the house that triggers recording, the DVR can miss the burglar breaking in on another camera, on the other side of the house. THIS IS A PROBLEM!

 

THE UGLY: The most disconcerting of all these issues is #1. What good is a surveillance system the consistently misses events and fails to record when it’s supposed to? Testing has been done under a wide variety of lighting situations to rule out shadows or glare as interfering with the proper recording of the scene.

 

If Night Owl can deliver what it promises, the system would be a great value! Unfortunately, as it stands now, it falls far short as it certainly doesn’t deliver reliable security. If Night Owl introduces a software updates that fix these issues it would be a great system. As it is, I have spent many hours documenting and sharing these issues with Night Owl, and I am disappointed they are still issues with no resolution in sight. Tech supports goal, at first seemed friendly and responsive, but now it seems their main goal is to close another service ticket, rather than deliver the promise of the system.