I am trying to put together a system for a doggy daycare. They would like to be able to have there customers view 4 camera's out of the 9 that they currently have. 2 of the 4 "customer" camera's will be replaced, but I am trying to find a NVR or DVR solution that will allow for 10-15 customers to view the cameras at once. Can anyone suggest a solution for this? I have been working with Ganz but there suggestion of an IP camera does not handle multiple viewings well while keeping image quality up. Video qualtiy is very high on thier list. I had previewed a VGA quality IP camera and the quality was not good enough for them.
So I am sure bandwith will be an issue with any solution.

Thanks for your help, and please let me know if you need more information.

- first issue I have is the comment that Ganz made concerning clients & quality. bs.......a normal IP camera won't change the quality on it's own based on # of clients. Frame rate may slow down but image quality will remain the same.
- what VGA IP camera did you try? Megapixel will be the best option to upgrade to; Axis 207MW is one of my favorites........but, Axis makes some decent quality Lower resolutions cams also.
- are you recording anything on these 4 cams? Avermedia makes some decent low budget stuff..............check them out.

and IP cams of any quality will cost some serrious bucks. If your client is willing to go there.just do it right. Let them make the selection on which one they want and from there out you'll be the hero....but if you promise a Disneyland pic and they don't like it.....watch out!!!

THnaks for the reply VST_man
I think I miss communicated the Ganz solution. You are right the frame rate was majorly affected by just 2 users viewing the camera. Should an IP camera have the ability to handle 10-15 users viewing the feed without major issues? Or do I need to look into a different solution? I would like to ability to time out a users session after a few mins also. Thanks for the reply.

Good suggestions VST Man, I'll add a few more ideas as well.

I've speced and sold a number of these types of systems actually. A couple of ideas for you and the end user. I would go NVR if possible. They typically cost less and offer room for future expandability. There's also a plus side to having them log in to the NVR and not on each individual camera. Not only can you give them 'user' rights to the system while restricting which cameras they can view but also the ability to remove their access at whatever point you want to. (ie, didn't pay their bill, bandwidth useage, renovations, etc...) There's a host of options that are valuable to an end user using the NVR rather than connecting to cameras seperately. The number of users (on our system anyway) is defaulted to 100 users, but can be changed to whatever you want. It's more of a bandwidth consideration than anything else, in which you can also throttle from the control panel if you have limitations on the network. The NVR I'm talking about is this little gem.. http://www.3xlogic.com/node/31
Since you mentioned VGA quality, I would have a gander at a blog I wrote a few weeks ago concerning megapixel. It sounds like the client is looking for higher end cameras? http://www.3xlogic.com/blog

Just thought I would mention a few of those ideas anway.

Erron,
Thanks for the reply, I will take a look at the 3xlogic products and let you know if I have any questions.

Yet again, I'll second Erron's recommendations... I've been using 3xlogic's (formerly CAMACC's) products for years, they're a bit pricier, but worth the cost.

Thanks Soundy! Very cool.

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Do the customers need to see live video or would high resolution snapshots suffice? The reason I ask is that you could have an IP camera / NVR / DVR update a webserver every X seconds where X is a good compromise for bandwidth consumption. The customers could login to the website and see snapshots taken over time. They could see thumbnails of Foofoo over time to see how they slept the night before or see what he's up to now. Click on the thumbnails for a full size view.

--
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Nobody here has heard of the recent "Puppy Cam" craze?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27724451/

And the actual feed:
http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.49.swf?cid=317016

I would recommend using cameras with h.264. The Axis products I have used reduce the bandwidth by around 80%. If you are planing on using 4 cameras for remote viewing and 4 customers are logged in each camera you are going to need lots bandwidth with mjpeg. just something to keep in mind.

If this is more than a temporary thing, you may want to consider going through a streaming-media service, like the "Puppy Cam" above does. That way you're only feeding one "client" with your stream.