Geovision GV-1480A 16CH Displayx480fps, RecordCIFx480 , with free CB220D

This card is very rich in features. The one thing that is important to know is that if you connect 16 cameras to it, and plan to view video history over the internet, ensure that you have a capable quad core processor in the PC.

The card uses the PC processor to render the video streams. When viewing video _history_ over the internet, if you don't have a quad core processor, the video history will be choppy (frames will be dropped.) This is not a negative point for this card, it just needs to be matched to the proper equipment (in this case, a capable processor.) If you don't plan on viewing video history over the internet, you can get away with a dual core (though I would not recommend it.)

Obviously, sufficient upload bandwidth is also required to view the video over the internet. The more cameras you have, the more bandwidth will be needed. To get decent FPS over the internet, plan on having at least 32KB/s of upload bandwidth per camera. For a 16 camera setup, that translates to half a megabyte per second of upload bandwidth which is more than what you get (by default) with most internet providers. 32K really is the minimum per camera. If you can get more at a reasonable cost from your ISP, don't hesitate to get it.

Also required is more than one hard drive in the PC. Have Windows on one drive and the cameras storing their video on another drive. You can get away with using only one drive (provided it is really fast) if you are only using a few cameras (say 6 or less) but, even then, there will be occasions when frames will be dropped.

The PDF manual that comes with the card is adequate (not great but not too bad.) Demonstration videos of the card capabilities are included in the CD. Plan to spend some time going over the manual, there are lots of nice features, some of which you will likely find very useful.

Conclusion: This is a very capable product, works very well when installed in a capable PC and offers lots of features. A short review like this one cannot make justice to it.

I will never buy anything from Amazon and its affiliate sellers. This company I bought the card from never responded to my concern about support for this card. Second, this card and the software included don't work. I couldn't download the driver for it. It always gives me (download fail) message. I called other Geovision websites, and they charge $39 per hour to help fix the problem. I don't recommend buying anything from this company.

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