Hikvision in Brown box vs White/Red box

I have been reading a lot on this subject and I am trying to make sense of it all.

 

Some people report that when trying to upgrade a Chinese version (brown box) camera it reverts to Chinese firmware.

 

I have discussed with several vendors and they tell me both versions are same camera. Only box color is different. The vendors have no particular interest as they sell both versions.

 

There is a sensible difference in pricing >50$ and since I buy them for myself I don't care much about the box. As for warranty it seems you don't get much anyway unless you buy from authorised US vendors.

 

To me it doesn't make sense that if I download the English (International) firmware and upload it to the camera to get Chinese firmware instead. The only way this may happen is if you enter the ftp server and choose automatic upgrade and get Chinese only firmware based on some MAC or serial number.

 

Has anyone had any experience in this matter? I need to make a decision soon.

 

Thank you

The fact that a camera is for local market (chinese) or for export market (international) does not come from the color of the box. You can find chinese products with brown or red/white box, and you can find international products with brown or red/white box.

 

But product for local/chinese market is cheaper. So there are chinese vendors who get the chinese product, patch it, and sell it with english language. With these products, if you do not know what you are doing and try to update/change the firmware, you can get the product back to chinese language. Yes, if you download an international firmware, as you call it, when you install it on a product that is supposed to be for the chinese market, you will get the product back to chinese language.

Sounds mean....

So this is why some vendors say that if I need upgrade they will send me the software?

In other words they send me the patched/hacked one?

I have three recent hikvision 3mps. All came in Brown boxes, two from a US vendor and one from a US vendor reselling a Chinese cam.

 

Two of them are english region, meaning I was able to put english firmware onto them and now they are 5.2.0 (most recent). One was Chinese region. It was multi-language, so I could select (as I can on the others) my language, and the entirety of everything on the camera is english BUT when I tried to put on the english 5.2.0 firmware I got a region mismatch. I never tried forcing it on with the TFTP approach.

 

Fairly recently somebody has posted online (google "Firmware 5.2.0 in English") firmware that will go onto a chinese-region cam and still everything is in English.

 

At this point I would personally buy cameras from aliexpress because they are wildly cheaper than US-based, and that firmware works fine. $85 shipped buys a camera, whereas just in September I paid $150 shipped for a US-based one. Granted, US had an awesome warranty (I'd probably not even bother with a china based), so that counts for some, and China takes two weeks to get here.

 

Finally, a fellow named CBX on a couple of forums seems to have an approach (but you pay him, though it seems all his customers are very happy) to make a chinese camera change to an english region. If you did this presumably it would remain that way forever and english firmware would work right through the web-upgrade interface.

Thank you Digiscan, great tips.

I want to bet this has an embeded Linux on it with a locale setting to Chinese and if you manage to change it you are done.

Sooner or later someone will post a way to change the region. Charging for it is a bit too much for my taste.

 

Aliexpress beats all prices for now. I think I am going to take my chance.

I am attaching how some vendors present the difference on aliexpress. I understand from what you guys said that there is also a third posibility of brown box with english lables and region.

ive just had my delivery of 6 cameras

 

1 is coloured box

5 brown

 

all have english labels on

 

the brown boxes are hacked chinese

the colour i suspect is english as the serial has the letters CCWR in it and had an english set up guide inside

 

the brown boxes have no set up guides and the serial numbers all have CCCH

 

all have

 

Firmware Version V5.2.0 build 140721

Encoding Version V5.0 build 140714

Thank you Digiscan, great tips.

I want to bet this has an embeded Linux on it with a locale setting to Chinese and if you manage to change it you are done.

Sooner or later someone will post a way to change the region. Charging for it is a bit too much for my taste.

 

Aliexpress beats all prices for now. I think I am going to take my chance.

I think you're right about the linux. if you truly want english it's probably worth paying CBX. I understand he spent a lot of time on it, and has a lot of content customers, so I think it's worth the time to leverage his fairly extensive testing, though you can surely google more about it. I didn't need to do it in my case because I was able to put multi-language 5.2.0 onto my chinese-region camera.

Well... I bought my cameras last night.

 

I ended up getting English region. I guess due to a combination of cold feet and small enough difference in price.

 

I paid 456$ on 3 Hik-2532's with 4 mm lens, wifi and shipping via Fedex.

 

The most I could have saved going with Chinese version (and all the 11.11 discounts they had) was 50$ for all 3 cameras. So I figured it may be worth it.

 

Remains to be seen how everything else goes and if I actually get anything for that money

 

Thank you all for the help and see you soon after I put them to work.

If you dont mind me asking, where did you order these cameras from?

Aliexpress. search hikvision cd ....2532 the complete model number

I dont think metricus got english region cameras on ali...metricus how did you confirm that your cameras are english region?

Well they guaranteed that they are upgradable from hikvision website directly. They have the red white box with English labels.

What I will get remains to be seen.