Geovision GV-1480A 16 Channel PC DVR Video Capture Card, 480 FPS, Plus Free GeoVision Cube IP Camer

I use the GV-1480A card in each of our 31 Super Supplements store locations with great success. Out of all the systems have built, I think we only received 1 card with a faulty port, which we did a replacement of from the manufacturer. The systems have a pretty easy learning curve as our Retail Admins can train store managers pretty quickly on navigating video playback, as well as live view through the Web hosted Application. We have never had any of these cards fail.

Why only 4 stars?

1. Support is challenging. They have an online chat which is helpful but the RMA process took me months to get the card replaced that came with a defective port.

2. English Translation. Geovision is based out of Taiwan with headquarters in most major countries. There have been many instances where the software has very broken English. For example, on their text sender, after I submit a change I am granted with a dialog box displaying "Please Waiting..."

3. Previous software releases were bad. If you have legacy software around, make sure to get upgraded to Geovision 8.4 or above. When Surveillance was moved from the Facilities department to the IT Department (Me) I almost switched out all or Geovision equipment for another brand as the old software was difficult to work with.

Even though these are pretty big Con's, I still give it 4 stars compared to Geovision's competitors.

This card would deserve 5 stars out of 5 if it had not been for one major flaw:

The card requires a connection to an IDE power cable to work. Connecting in the power cable wouldn't be a hassle if it wasn't for the delicate soldering job done on the connector. I bought two of these cards, one installed fine, the other had the connector snap off. I would have had to return the product and exchange it if I hadn't soldered on back the connector much better myself. The card works just fine with the software included now.

Buy Geovision GV-1480A 16 Channel PC DVR Video Capture Card, 480 FPS, Plus Free GeoVision Cube IP Camer Now

I installed the GV-1480A in a Dell XPS 8300 and hooked up a couple of analog cameras and the IP camera that came bundled with the DVR board.

Setup was relatively easy although the 600+ page user manual is only provided in electronic form. The manual, for all it's volume is lacking in some detail on various settings.

The system is recording as expected and time will tell how much recording time I will get on the hard drives (1.3TB system drive and 2TB data drive).

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