I purchased this a few months ago based on the stellar reviews everyone gave it, but they obviously haven't needed to actually play back any footage or backup a copy for the police. The software is USELESS... and when I say useless, I mean there's physically no way to select the date you want to playback files from. There's some glitch with the software and the calendar just flips around randomly, sometimes years ahead of the date I want. I spent half an hour just now trying to get a file to catch a shoplifter and it's impossible.Theoretically you can use the remote control on a tv to use it, but the remote barely works and it's a whole system of unintelligle up and down arrow commands, and once I was trying to input a date and the only characters it would give me to choose from were various types of puncutation no numbers.
I gave it 2 stars because you could actually just use it as a live monitor for a security guard sitting in a warehouse or something, so one star for that functionality.
Yeah yeah the cameras are easy to set up, it starts recording right away, the box is pretty and has lights on it. So what? what's the point of a security dvr if you can't view the recorded footage?
Setup Plugged in the system, hooked up the video out to a monitor, turned it on, and the 3x3 grid came up, showing 8 channels (plus 1 empty as 8 is max). I had ordered a ccd camera with it, so opened that up, hooked video cable to the DVR and the camera's power to a transformer, and the camera's video signal showed up in the 3x3 grid. So far so good.
To test the camera's infrared function out, I turned out the lights, and immediately could see a grayish display that allowed you to see a person from 40+ feet away. During this time I noticed an 'R' being displayed on the DVR's display (specifically within the grid that held the camera's view), which made me realize that the DVR was recording the video.
The recording brought me to the Playback function, which uses the Search feature to find recordings....the Search is not too easy to figure out, but once I did I could pull up the recording and watch it...seemed to be doing the job.
Once I started the permanent installation, I moved the DVR to it's final location, then started running video cables down through the wall. The cables I used have the video & power both only after pulling 2 cabled down from the attic and trying to plug them into the DVR did I realize that although the video connections are BNC female on both ends, the power connections are male on one end and female on the other my luck (which is always BAD) proved out, when I figured out I had pulled the wrong end down, so I had to pull the cables out of the wall, reverse them, then pull them back down. Lots of work in a hot attic!
Once the cables were pulled, I mounted the cameras then fed the cables to them and hooked them up. On the DVR end, hooked up the video, then had a choice on power could use a wall-wart aka transformer for each cable, or buy the 4-connection 12vdc device which provides power to 4 cameras (more if you buy the 1-into-2 splitters) I used the 4-connection device, and plugged it into the cables near the DVR. By the time I finished adding a total of 6 cameras onto the DVR, there are quite a few cables behind the DVR might want to keep this in mind when planning.
Once all 6 cameras were running, I started working with the motion detection config... each camera channel can be configured with a 'mask' that defines where within the camera's image motion is noticed (or ignored). This makes it very nice when you might have a small tree or hanging plant that might move in the wind you can tell the DVR to ignore motion within a given area. Each camera signal has 4 levels of sensitivity default is 2 I found that 2 seems to miss quite a bit, but when I bumped it to 3 I got better results I tried 4 (the highest) but it seemed to start recording on such small motion that I couldn't actually tell what had triggered the recording.
I also played around with the remote access (via network) from my local network (LAN). The browser requires an Active-X plugin, and even though I turned off every security setting I could find in IE, Windows 7 would not allow me to install the plugin, because the publisher was listed as 'unknown' and Win7/IE would NOT accept that. I finally found that by downloading it in FireFox (had to turn off Symantec Antivirus first) I could install it and run....which gives a nice GUI to work with from your laptop. This Graphical User Interface (GUI) provides the same functions as the DVR's general menu (accessed via the handheld remote that comes with it) including Setup, Record, Playback....it also provides an Export process that exports the H.264 recording to AVI format, so you can play it on your laptop/PC directly.
Overall I feel like I've gotten my money's worth, even considering that each channel requires a camera that runs $40-80 apiece, so the final cost of a full system is $500 & up. The system is simple enough that most DIY'ers that can handle a weekend project can install and configure a basic CCTV-DVR system that should help to figure out which neighbors are letting their dogs soil your yard ;-) Within two days I was able to figure out why my back-yard bird feeder was turned a different direction every morning a cute little doe (female deer) was caught coming up from the city park to feast on peanuts/sunflower/millet BUSTED!!I purchased a 8CH CIB DVR a few months ago. When I went to play back video to see how my dog was getting out, I found that the DVR randomly blanks out and stops recording for anywhere from 3 seconds to several minutes per channel. I also tried to hook up some high end Pelco Spectra IV SE 35X PTZ cameras. This unit will not control these cameras. Just FYI. I contacted Customer support over a month ago. I received a very quick automatic response saying they would get back with me asap. Month later, still no attempt from anyone at this company reaching out to assist me with my issues.. I own an integrations company so id consider myself pretty familiar with this type of equipment.. lol I will not be purchasing any more of these for my needs or customers..I bought this for 8 pinhole cameras (similar to the ones on amazon but not the same brand) being put up in an office. Requirements were fairly simple, 8 channel dvr that was lightweight and could be viewed remotely and from an iPhone.
I picked up an Acer V173 Djb 17-Inch LCD Monitor Black for the monitor and it works well, with a native resolution of 1280x1024.
The cameras were standard 1v75OHM and they seem to work fine. I didn't use siamese cabling, rather I went with BALUNs and cat5 for the cable runs (this means I also used a dc power distribution center, but regular dc power plugs should be fine for BALUNs as long as the genders match up).
Setting everything up was fairly easy with the remote. Note that some of the network numbers might scare you off (192.168.001.001 for example rather than 192.168.1.1) and UPNP didn't work for me. Either way I just forwarded the ports and gave the DVR a static IP. After connecting remotely I actually found out that the plugin worked way better in Chrome than IE (which is usually required). The iPhone app worked fine, but remember to set up the port and password in the specific mobile section.
I found it fairly easy to work with. Playback worked great over the LAN but watching old videos is semi painful across the net unless you have good upload speeds.
Recommended for the price.Udate 4/22/2013:
I owe 5 of these DVRs now and so far so good. I've run into a couple of problems that turned out to be power supply problem for the cameras. The only annoyance is that the browser playback plugin crashes quite often, and lately it doesn't work work well with Google Chrome (may be I'm missing the latest plugin). Firefox still works fine and Android viewing over internet is works great too. Tech support is responsive. My other disappointment is that high end 3rd party DVR software is not compatible with this camera.
Other reviewers commented that there is no way to select date to playback and others suggest playback doesn't work well. Both are not accurate and probably due to some other problem. The software is not very impressive, but play back is as simple is clicking on "Play Back" and then on the right would a be calendar from which you pick a date. After you pick the date you can search by channel or search all channels. Recordings are grouped into 1 hour time chunks (this is configurable) and of course you can only go back as far as your storage space allows. I've uploaded a picture of one of my 4-camera DVR showing the playback interface. I get 22 days of 24/7 recording on this one. I have another 500GB hard drive with 8 cameras recording 24/7 and I get about 10 days worth of recording.
Note that this company has a utility called PlayBack software and that only plays back your archived H.264 footage. You cannot search within that tool. If you use the regular supplied NetDVR software or a browser with netdvr plugin you can search and play back with no problem. You can also search directly on the on the DVR although I don't use that feature very often.
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After giving this product 2-stars in my initial review due to viewing software problems I've now revised my review to 5-stars. This product is very much worth it. Setup was a breeze. Just plug in, turn on and you are finished. I used VideoSecure dome and bullet cameras. My viewing software problem turned out to be due to missing audio device drivers on the PC. It's a Win2K8 server that I never bothered to install and enable audio since I don't need one. The cameras I'm using don't have audio and so I thought I didn't have to worry about that but it turns out both the browser plugin and client viewing software require working audio on the PC to function properly. Everything is working well now including remote viewing over the Internet. I never had to call customer service, but based on the sellers helpful response to my initial review I can only conclude that customer service would be great.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%Original Review for reference%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I bought this full of hope based on previous 5-star reviews. Setup went quite easily as described, just plug in cameras and it starts recording. Unfortunately that's where the fun ends. My primary access to this system is supposed to be over the local area network but the provided Netdrv software for remote viewing doesn't work. Both the Windows client and browser plugin hang as soon as I enter login password and hit enter. It displays "Login Success! Initializing..." and that's it, the plugin or Windows application hangs. It also says "Login Success" regardless of the password I use (right, wrong, blank) as long as the IP address and port numbers are correct. Has anyone gotten the remote client viewer to work on Win2K8 server or Windows 7? It's probably worth 4 or 5 stars if you have it connected to a monitor for live viewing, but for me it's nearly worthless, hence the two stars.
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