I am sorry to everyone that helped me. I read stuff and everything. I was in a hurry, and the people I am doing this for wanted more audio than Video Insight had. Thanks for your input Thomas. I ended up getting a GV900-16 card. Thomas, I will still check on your products.

DVR_Exp.
I wish you would have got back to me sooner and I would have bought from you. I like the card I got, but I could have got it cheaper, (not your price) right here in Tulsa. I called Geovision and asked them for someone to buy from in my area. They told me to call someone from Texas that the prices really sucked. When I found out about this place right here, they was pissed off when I told them what happened. This place right here was cheaper than the place I bought the card from. ( I know how that goes )

DVR_Exp.
I also noticed that my card had stickers over 2 chips. I could tell that one was an Atmel chip. The other is probably just an I/O chip. Probably $4.00 Dollars in chips at the most. But they want to charge $200.00 and more for these cheap little chips. Atmel chips are programmable, and if that is all they do, then charging that much more is just not right.

DVR_Exp
I respect you, I am just amazed at what this will do. I hooked up 4 cameras. Some that was cheap to some better ones. All looked good. I also looked at an Altel card or something like that. They had a much better interface. My card that I got and the manual for installing it did not match. The manual told me to execute a file that did not even exist. The software used in Geovision sucks in my point, but it is a good card. Let me say the support for the cards suck. I can tell you that if you followed the directions in the manual that I got with the card, you would never get it to work.

Dan

no kidding! (well I can only talk for the remote software). But they do have an SDK that you can make your own remote software with.

As for chips being cheap, im sure alot of the cost involved is in creating the DVR software, as that takes time. eg. 10 hours x $75 an hour = $750 - more features = more money - same for all DVRs and any other hardware. Then again they get paid alot less in Asia probably for software programming ..?? (not sure).

Same can be said for alot of DVR manu's software, or any software, there is always something that the client wants, that is not there, but can the developer think of every thing? not always .... or they can, but then the cost of the product will be much higher as more hours are put in. Also errors in installation of software can be related to other issues like other installed programs, non installed programs, corrupt system files, non existent system files, or an OS not supported by the software ..and more. Errors with hardware can be many other issues as well such as device conflicts, etc.

Support of course also effects the cost of the product, you will pay more for a product that has great support.

PS. I have never used the GEO cards, this is not neccassarily directed to them or their cards, just a general reply to all products, not neccassarily related to DVRs or CCTV, mainly general software related.

I don not like to sell overseas for this reason, I could have sold you the card even cheaper, but all that would have done, as you are already aware is piss off your distributor, distributors offer support, thats why you pay more, USUALLY the more you pay, the more support you get. i hate selling overseas and wish you had not told your local distributors as this may cuase somewhat of a headache with Geo, not that they really mind..after all your not really a diostributor and they were prepared to sell to you.
I kept my price up to protect the larger distributors, bloody wish US would not sell here so cheap as they do, i have only ever sold to people in the forum for this reason.



I honestly do not have that much to do with the cards any more as I am in Mangement and Sales not building the machines, but the only chips that should have had stickers on them are the dongle chips, and they should either be 900-xxxSP or 900-xxxS1, I am not convinced you got a legit card but would be very interested to see it, very hard to say without seeing it. Perhaps you can post a picture or two!



As for the interface, i have to admit it sucks and stupid Geo will not change it, but mostly just looks, I have tried many many many and I do mena many types of product and software and although the GUI and layout sucks, I am yet to see a better formed piece of software.

What file did the manual ask you to execute (like I said before I do not have much to do with the cards) it is highly possible that you recieved a version of the softwrae that is new and an old manual, Geo release new software all the time, but not new manuals, i am betting that this is the issue, but I would like to know, strange though of all the thousands of cards I have sold, no one has brought this point up to me, so would be very interested to find out!

Support comes from good distributors...and that is what you pay for! They know what to look out for. As for the cost of the cards, let me tell you this, they are dirt cheap, you do not pay for the card, you pay for the software, we almost looked at writing our own, but the cost to stay on top is immense, that is what you ar paying for, you are paying for the level of programming and devleopment and that costs a lot of money indeed, i am not justifying their pricing, it is indeed insane when you know hardware, especially if you have dealt with PC Hardware before and know the costings of manufacture...but software development is very expensive and Geo can hardly fall short there.

As for paying $200 for chips, I really hope you are talking about the whole card, there should bve no charge for extra chips or to change to upgrade to S1 chip for version 6.1, but if your point is that these are cheap chips on the card, I agree, but once again your not paying for the hardware.

I would like to see the card, sounds al a bit funny if your paying seperate for the chips, I am assuming dongle chip, I would also love to know what price that you were offered from both your local guy Texas and Geo, if you have time PM me it would be evry interesting, the prices I gave you are APPARENTLY the prices geo would have offered to you if you went direct, thats why I do not go lower than that otherwise distributors get really pissed off!

Regards,
GC

On just a pure chip basis, any chip costs a few dollars to make. But firmware isn't free. Licencing isn't free. Software in this case isn't free. Printing the board isn't free. Getting the FCC requirements isn't free. There are always more costs then raw materials and labor in anything. And that doesn't begin to factor in profit.

To everyone,

I cannot answer everyones questions tonight. But I will send DVR_Exp a picture of mine. I think it is legit, but I am not sure. Mine came with like 6.0 software but a manual for something else. Mine told me to execute Drvinst.exe from the driver folder. Well that file did not exist anywhere on the CD. But anyway, it is working. For some reason the people I did this for act like little kids in a candy store.

What I was complaining about is that the chips going from 8 to 16 cameras should not cost that much more if it is all in the Atmel chip and the I/O chip. I am almost positive that is all it is on the Geo cards. The GV900-8 card already has everything on it to make it a 16 camera card, but they replace these 2 chips for one or the other. If I am wrong, let someone tell me. I am not complaining about the people that write the software for all of this to look good and work. But it does not take much to program an Atmel chip, so do not tell me that. The interface to make it all work is different, and I respect you guys. I just want someone to tell me that there is a big difference in the GV900-8 and the GV900-16 as far as hardware.

Thanks again for everyones help. I would like to respond to everyone tonight, but I think I have had to much Ice Tea to drink tonight and I have got to go. :lol:

not enough bud here yet ..! :-)

But yes, the same question can be asked about the cost difference on say a Kalatel 10 channel, to their 16 channel, its like $1000 difference! I think it may have something to do with the market, keeping their prices in line with their competitors, more than it is actually being that more expensive to make or program. Hopefully they will alll drop their price difference from 8/10 channels to 16 channels and it will all be normal pricing eventually. Heck they can drop all their prices while they are at it.

Rory

Except it's not that simple. 16 cameras at high res, full frame rate pushes the limits of the PCI bus. You have to design accordingly. But a big chunk is marketing. You have to have multiple price options.

hi
difference is a code in a chip's , as password for 4ch or 8ch or 16ch software
hardware on gv900 8ch or 16ch is identical
dusan