LILIN LHS-DVR304 4-Channel Full D1 Recording Resolution Surveillance DVR

Over the last several years I have owned 4 different DVRs for my home security system, so I do have a bit of experience with DVR units. Although I did not purchase this item from Amazon, I liked the unit enough to post a review for the Lilin DVR304.

Pros:

Quick setup

D1 "recording" resolution many DVRs only offer D1 "viewing" resolution, the Lilin DVR304 also records at D1.

The motion detection recording works very well and has adjustable sensitivity and area mapping.

It also works very well with low-light cameras at night (some DVRs interpret the subtle image noise in low light cameras as motion, this leads to a lot of false alarms and recording of nothing This Lilin DVR does an excellent job of filtering out the noise.

Firmware updates are available on Lilin's website and are very easy to install.

Cons:

The owners manual is poorly written. If you are new to security DVRs, you will probably be searching the internet for help.

The fan on the unit is a bit noisy (it sounds about the same as a desktop pc).

The recording playback function is a bit quirky but it does work.

The best advice I can give anyone about a surveillance system is to buy quality equipment. Most of the pre-packaged stuff in the stores produces such low quality recorded images that an person's identity is almost impossible to make out. I highly recommend the Lilin DVR304. Combine this DVR with some high quality cameras and you will have yourself a very impressive surveillance system.

LILIN LHS-DVR304 4-Channel Full D1 Recording Resolution Surveillance DVR

I like it. I would buy it again. I paid $230 at

Here are some quirky problems which should not turn you off the product.

I am posting them here to save somebody some frustration if you get stuck on these issues:

If the emailed image is not changing I discovered that running a hard drive filesystem check will correct the glitch. It is in the SYSTEM menu.

Also, the fast forward and rewind buttons are ridiculously configured, but you can learn that quirk. It is not a show stopper. 2x 4x ... 64x but if you press rewind it starts at the fast forward speed. so -2x might go to +2x or +64x becomes -64x. You can only get back to 2x by going past 64x.

Step/pause seems to only work if you pull up a single recorded segment and start at the end and go backwards; not a show stopper either.

I am very happy with it.

One complaint is the hard drive and fan are noisy like a desktop computer. I might buy a small $90 SSD drive instead to stop the drive hum.

I extended the fan through some pringles cans and tube foam tube, through a wall into a closet.

If the remote stops working, set the DVR ID to OFF and read about that feature of one remote controlling 256 DVRs.

I did a short video just showing the remote internet monitoring/playback feature:

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