raitchison

I was (am) in the exact same position as you, PC tech with next to no security/camera experience. See my own post here: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=45019 In any case I decided that it wasn't essential for us to have the old analog (BNC connected) and the new (future) IP cameras on the same system so we are preparing to buy a new analog DVR just to replace our old/busted PC based unit (which just died this afternoon) and then we start buying IP cameras we will buy a new NVR for those. If I decided that I must have one unit to do both I'd probably buy the Dahua unit I was looking at originally. (DH-DVR7816S-U) but as I mentioned I'm a complete novice at this stuff myself so that may be a bad decision.

I don't know on the cables specifically, most of it is coax but some is twisted pair. The TP stuff goes into an adapter to connect to BNC. Are those newer units available?

So my parents have a small business and currently have a couple of DVR systems that need replacing: 1 16 Channel Eyemax DV-9240 PC based DVR 1 Crappy Lorex Blackbox 4 Channel (Costco Special) The PC based system is 10+ years old and the hard drives are on their way out. I'm thinking they should get a Hybrid system that will support the analog cameras they have now and support IP/PoE cameras for the future. Ideally we could get one unit that replaced both the PC and the Lorex but we at least need to replace the PC. The Dahua DH-DVR7816S-U is the best system I've found so far, at least on paper: http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/dvr780478087816s-u-460.html Thinking I could buy one of those and throw 4 2TB hard drives in there, plug in the existing cameras and call it a day. Later on we could replace the existing cameras with IP/PoE units (or add new cameras). I'm pretty sure that the existing cameras are universal and will work but I'd like to be able to know for sure. Is that Dahua a good system? Is there something else I should be looking at? Thanks for the advice.