Whats the diffrents between a computer type dvr and a stand alone dvr are they the same or can one do more than the other.sorry if the question is dum but im still new to all this.How does one build a stand alone dvr.Thanks and pleasse be gentle.

A standalone is a fully contained unit that usually has an embedded operating system and a manufacturer designed user interface. A computer based dvr is built around a pci dvr capture card. The computer is usually dedicated to use as a dvr and built with components that will best support the capture card. A standalone dvr is very difficult to build by an end user, where a computer based is easily built and customized. This board has a ton of information, look around for more details.

Hi,ayalas,PC-DVR is easy to expand,i mean you can plug up to 5 dvr cards on a pc to up to maximum 64 channels.but stand alone dvr can't.

on the other hand,stand alone dvr is not easy to be infected virus.

besides,pc-dvr has more demand on software,so it's convenient to add more function.but stand alone dvr can't.

Hope it's useful to you!

Not too much anymore, basically just private parts vs. cheap off the shelf parts. RTOS exists for x86 hardware so it's not like you can't build one on a PC chassis.

Many standalone DVR's that use hardware compression will use a lot less electricity than a PC DVR, especially if the pc one is using software compression, and needs a monster cpu to run at a good speed.

A decent DVR with hardware compression can often use something like a 300mhz processor instead of a 3ghz processor often used on a pc, and the standalone does not need all the extra's a pc has built in as standard usually.