:
kaysadeya - 24 Apr 2005, 03:57 pm
This is my long-promised review of the Kodicom KSR516. This is my first CCTV DVR, so I can’t comment on how the unit compares to anything but the Lorex timelapse VCR it replaces.
I’ve focused on the shortcomings in this review, but that’s because when I research a product I want to understand where it falls short. What it does right, unless it’s exceptional, is taken for granted. Overall I’m more than very happy with this DVR! It’s very solid and its basic operations are reliable.
My setup:
• 12 cameras at various locations outdoors.
• 4 monitors: one VGA and three standard TVs. Each TV location has a Xantech IR receiver that relays remote-control commands to an IR emitter on the DVR. The remote control is an important feature in my system. There are actually two versions of this DVR. The version with the black front panel and the big knob in the middle does not have a remote control; my version is the one with the silver front panel with the knob on the right.
• Communication between the DVR and my PC client is over a wireless network, so I can monitor and playback from any location on my laptop.
Highlights:
• Solid, reliable operation
• Linux OS
• Remote control (necessary for my home installation)
• Mouse (accelerates admin tasks in setup menu)
• Monitoring outputs: 1 VGA, 1 BNC composite, 1 S-Video
• 112 fps recording (NTSC)
• Resolution: 352 X 240 or 740 X 240 (NTSC)
• Compression: Proprietary ‘Engine-X’
• CD-RW backup or remote USB device
Documentation:
What looks like a good user guide turns out to be a disappointment when you try to figure out how to set and use certain features. It appears that Kodicom was really serious about trying to produce a good document. The presentation is really very professional, but the writer was unable to effectively communicate how configure and use the DVR. Specifics below.
Setup:
Truly plug-and-play. Connecting the cameras and setting the basic recording features is easy and intuitive. However, configuring some of the motion-detection features and getting the unit to talk to the PC client over the network is another story (see “Recording” and “Networking”).
The first unit I received had a defective ‘Camera 1’ input, but my supplier immediately sent a replacement unit. I was able to keep my original unit until the replacement unit arrived and they paid all return shipping, so there was really no pain there.
The unit comes with an 80 GB drive. One of the great things about this unit is that you can expand the storage with as many as four off-the-self drives up to 1 TB. I ordered two Western Digital 250 GB drives from Amazon and threw them in one Saturday morning. They worked perfectly from day one. However, there was some confusion over whether the third disk should be designated as ‘Secondary Master’ or ‘Secondary Slave.’ Another deficiency with the user guide.
The DVR has two fans that do an excellent job cooling the circuits and drives, but they also generate a lot of noise. This isn’t a problem for me, but it might be for someone who installs the unit in an occupied room.
Monitoring:
You can monitor all 16 cameras in realtime, or any subset in either 9, 4, or 1 camera displays. You can also set an ‘auto channel rotation’ mode that will cycle through either 9, 4, or 1 camera displays. One drawback is that you can’t disable camera inputs, so you have to cycle through unused camera displays. You can use the loop-out/input jacks to duplicate displays, but I would hope that Kodicom offers a more elegant work-around in their future DVRs.
You cannot view the setup menu from both the monitor and VGA screens. Rather you have to set the dip switch in the back to one or the other. I understand that in most commercial installations it's probably desirable to have only one central control; but in my particular installation it would be useful to have the option to set the unit so the menu can be accessed from either the VGA or any of the three TVs.
Every time you use the remote control to select a different camera or view to monitor, the unit BEEPS. Makes you want to rip out the speaker!! One the plus side, the DVR also beeps when it loses a camera signal.
Monitoring from the PC client is easy and convenient, but the display is not realtime, as you’d expect when a network is in the middle.
This is a nit, but it would be nice if the unit supported more PTZ protocols, or at least provided the ability to input a custom protocol. I have two PTZ controllers that the DVR does not recognize.
Recording:
You can set the resolution, color, brightness, contrast, and motion sensitivity level for each individual camera. In addition you can alert other cameras when motion is detected on a different camera. For example, if motion is detected on Camera 1, you can start recording on Camera 1, as well as Cameras 2 and 3. Though I haven’t made any use of this feature, you can trigger recording from external sensors and alert the PC client when an event occurs. You can also trigger external alarms based on certain events. Sweet features, but I don’t know if they are standard for all DVRs.
The Engine-X compression appears to be efficient. With 12 cameras set at full sensitivity motion detection over the entire image (almost always recording) and at the highest resolution, the DVR stores about 10 days of video on 580 GB of storage. (I used these settings to test to maximum limits of the DVR and will be readjusting them later for more efficient storage.)
When setting up motion-detection, it’s unclear how to block segments of the view area from motion detection. The default display in “Recording Setup” is a grid of rectangles that partially mask the image. Clicking on a rectangle presents a clear, unmasked image for that rectangle. The user guide indicates that the “highlighted areas” are the ones that are blocked from motion detection, but that seems counter-intuitive. A more intuitive setup would be that the partially masked areas are the ones that are blocked from motion detection and the clear areas detect the motion. So I’m not sure whether the user guide is wrong or they muffed the interface.
Playback (“search mode”):
You can playback stored video while the system continues to record current views.
The playback image is very good and can be done in either 16, 9, 4 or single camera views. On the PC client, you can select all cameras or any combination of cameras for playback. Selecting a single camera view presents a small view the same size as that camera in the quad view, only alone with a lot of black space around it. You must zoom in to get a full view of a single screen. Once zoomed-in you can proceed with playback in the full screen view. On the PC-client, you need to first stop playback to zoom in, but the zoomed-in setting remains when switching between multi-camera and single-camera views. However, when playing back directly from the DVR, you have to zoom-in each time you revisit the single-camera view. Very annoying. It would be much better to make zoom-in the default when switching to a single view.
The PC client provides much more control over the playback than the menu on the DVR, which is odd because playback directly from the DVR to a VGA monitor provides the best image. From the PC client, you can change the sharpness, brightness and other settings for each view. You can even rotate the view and use a ‘digital zoom’ feature to zoom into a portion of the image during playback. Nice, but these features are not available from the DVR menu.
In general, I’ve encountered fewer problems playing back from the PC client than directly on the DVR. In either environment, it takes some time to learn how to playback without messing things up. Going forward and then backward and vise versa can be a frustrating experience. I’ve also discovered that, if you play back a large number of cameras and then select one or a subset of those cameras for further playback, after a long period of time, the cameras that weren’t in that subset are “left behind.” For example, if you’re playing back 8 cameras and at the “12:00” timestamp switch to 4 and playback until “3:00,” when you switch back to 8 cameras, you discover that the other 4 are still stuck at “12:00.” What’s worse is that, rather than catching up to “3:00”, all of the cameras go back to “12:00.” If less time elapses, the cameras with the older timestamp will catch up with the cameras with the newer timestamp, so the fall-back-to-the-older-timestamp behavior appears to be a bug.
I've noticed a few freeze-ups on playback directly on the DVR unit (VGA display and using the front controls). This occurs mostly when displaying a quad screen and varying the playback speed. Seems to happen frequently when playing back in reverse.
Networking:
There’s a special PC client, called the “Center Program,” that you install on a PC. I don’t know if there’s a Mac or Unix client and I’m not aware of any generic browser-based client. I can’t compare the PC client to others, but it’s good enough. As Rory knows, I had a really hard time configuring everything to get it to work, but that’s because the needed information is strewn all over the users guide and most of the necessary bits and pieces of information I could assemble weren’t very clear. Once I got everything working, the PC client is more-or-less solid. I’ve had it freeze up a few times and crash twice, but that’s better than most of the apps I run on WinDoze.
Backup:
I haven’t yet used the CD-RW drive or a remote USB device to do any backups, but will report back when I do.
I’ve focused on the shortcomings in this review, but that’s because when I research a product I want to understand where it falls short. What it does right, unless it’s exceptional, is taken for granted. Overall I’m more than very happy with this DVR! It’s very solid and its basic operations are reliable.
My setup:
• 12 cameras at various locations outdoors.
• 4 monitors: one VGA and three standard TVs. Each TV location has a Xantech IR receiver that relays remote-control commands to an IR emitter on the DVR. The remote control is an important feature in my system. There are actually two versions of this DVR. The version with the black front panel and the big knob in the middle does not have a remote control; my version is the one with the silver front panel with the knob on the right.
• Communication between the DVR and my PC client is over a wireless network, so I can monitor and playback from any location on my laptop.
Highlights:
• Solid, reliable operation
• Linux OS
• Remote control (necessary for my home installation)
• Mouse (accelerates admin tasks in setup menu)
• Monitoring outputs: 1 VGA, 1 BNC composite, 1 S-Video
• 112 fps recording (NTSC)
• Resolution: 352 X 240 or 740 X 240 (NTSC)
• Compression: Proprietary ‘Engine-X’
• CD-RW backup or remote USB device
Documentation:
What looks like a good user guide turns out to be a disappointment when you try to figure out how to set and use certain features. It appears that Kodicom was really serious about trying to produce a good document. The presentation is really very professional, but the writer was unable to effectively communicate how configure and use the DVR. Specifics below.
Setup:
Truly plug-and-play. Connecting the cameras and setting the basic recording features is easy and intuitive. However, configuring some of the motion-detection features and getting the unit to talk to the PC client over the network is another story (see “Recording” and “Networking”).
The first unit I received had a defective ‘Camera 1’ input, but my supplier immediately sent a replacement unit. I was able to keep my original unit until the replacement unit arrived and they paid all return shipping, so there was really no pain there.
The unit comes with an 80 GB drive. One of the great things about this unit is that you can expand the storage with as many as four off-the-self drives up to 1 TB. I ordered two Western Digital 250 GB drives from Amazon and threw them in one Saturday morning. They worked perfectly from day one. However, there was some confusion over whether the third disk should be designated as ‘Secondary Master’ or ‘Secondary Slave.’ Another deficiency with the user guide.
The DVR has two fans that do an excellent job cooling the circuits and drives, but they also generate a lot of noise. This isn’t a problem for me, but it might be for someone who installs the unit in an occupied room.
Monitoring:
You can monitor all 16 cameras in realtime, or any subset in either 9, 4, or 1 camera displays. You can also set an ‘auto channel rotation’ mode that will cycle through either 9, 4, or 1 camera displays. One drawback is that you can’t disable camera inputs, so you have to cycle through unused camera displays. You can use the loop-out/input jacks to duplicate displays, but I would hope that Kodicom offers a more elegant work-around in their future DVRs.
You cannot view the setup menu from both the monitor and VGA screens. Rather you have to set the dip switch in the back to one or the other. I understand that in most commercial installations it's probably desirable to have only one central control; but in my particular installation it would be useful to have the option to set the unit so the menu can be accessed from either the VGA or any of the three TVs.
Every time you use the remote control to select a different camera or view to monitor, the unit BEEPS. Makes you want to rip out the speaker!! One the plus side, the DVR also beeps when it loses a camera signal.
Monitoring from the PC client is easy and convenient, but the display is not realtime, as you’d expect when a network is in the middle.
This is a nit, but it would be nice if the unit supported more PTZ protocols, or at least provided the ability to input a custom protocol. I have two PTZ controllers that the DVR does not recognize.
Recording:
You can set the resolution, color, brightness, contrast, and motion sensitivity level for each individual camera. In addition you can alert other cameras when motion is detected on a different camera. For example, if motion is detected on Camera 1, you can start recording on Camera 1, as well as Cameras 2 and 3. Though I haven’t made any use of this feature, you can trigger recording from external sensors and alert the PC client when an event occurs. You can also trigger external alarms based on certain events. Sweet features, but I don’t know if they are standard for all DVRs.
The Engine-X compression appears to be efficient. With 12 cameras set at full sensitivity motion detection over the entire image (almost always recording) and at the highest resolution, the DVR stores about 10 days of video on 580 GB of storage. (I used these settings to test to maximum limits of the DVR and will be readjusting them later for more efficient storage.)
When setting up motion-detection, it’s unclear how to block segments of the view area from motion detection. The default display in “Recording Setup” is a grid of rectangles that partially mask the image. Clicking on a rectangle presents a clear, unmasked image for that rectangle. The user guide indicates that the “highlighted areas” are the ones that are blocked from motion detection, but that seems counter-intuitive. A more intuitive setup would be that the partially masked areas are the ones that are blocked from motion detection and the clear areas detect the motion. So I’m not sure whether the user guide is wrong or they muffed the interface.
Playback (“search mode”):
You can playback stored video while the system continues to record current views.
The playback image is very good and can be done in either 16, 9, 4 or single camera views. On the PC client, you can select all cameras or any combination of cameras for playback. Selecting a single camera view presents a small view the same size as that camera in the quad view, only alone with a lot of black space around it. You must zoom in to get a full view of a single screen. Once zoomed-in you can proceed with playback in the full screen view. On the PC-client, you need to first stop playback to zoom in, but the zoomed-in setting remains when switching between multi-camera and single-camera views. However, when playing back directly from the DVR, you have to zoom-in each time you revisit the single-camera view. Very annoying. It would be much better to make zoom-in the default when switching to a single view.
The PC client provides much more control over the playback than the menu on the DVR, which is odd because playback directly from the DVR to a VGA monitor provides the best image. From the PC client, you can change the sharpness, brightness and other settings for each view. You can even rotate the view and use a ‘digital zoom’ feature to zoom into a portion of the image during playback. Nice, but these features are not available from the DVR menu.
In general, I’ve encountered fewer problems playing back from the PC client than directly on the DVR. In either environment, it takes some time to learn how to playback without messing things up. Going forward and then backward and vise versa can be a frustrating experience. I’ve also discovered that, if you play back a large number of cameras and then select one or a subset of those cameras for further playback, after a long period of time, the cameras that weren’t in that subset are “left behind.” For example, if you’re playing back 8 cameras and at the “12:00” timestamp switch to 4 and playback until “3:00,” when you switch back to 8 cameras, you discover that the other 4 are still stuck at “12:00.” What’s worse is that, rather than catching up to “3:00”, all of the cameras go back to “12:00.” If less time elapses, the cameras with the older timestamp will catch up with the cameras with the newer timestamp, so the fall-back-to-the-older-timestamp behavior appears to be a bug.
I've noticed a few freeze-ups on playback directly on the DVR unit (VGA display and using the front controls). This occurs mostly when displaying a quad screen and varying the playback speed. Seems to happen frequently when playing back in reverse.
Networking:
There’s a special PC client, called the “Center Program,” that you install on a PC. I don’t know if there’s a Mac or Unix client and I’m not aware of any generic browser-based client. I can’t compare the PC client to others, but it’s good enough. As Rory knows, I had a really hard time configuring everything to get it to work, but that’s because the needed information is strewn all over the users guide and most of the necessary bits and pieces of information I could assemble weren’t very clear. Once I got everything working, the PC client is more-or-less solid. I’ve had it freeze up a few times and crash twice, but that’s better than most of the apps I run on WinDoze.
Backup:
I haven’t yet used the CD-RW drive or a remote USB device to do any backups, but will report back when I do.