I'm looking for a non-Hikvision DVR.

Someone at our company recently hired some folks to change out our old PC based DVR with a dedicated one. They brought in a Hikvision, which I have a problem with , it won't work unless you install a plugin straight from China - which is a security concern, not to mention the other security concerns with the system and it's known vulnerabilities. I tried installing the software on my Windows 8 laptop anyways and to say the least it was a crash fest. Our company is full of Mac users, especially the executive people who are going to want access to view the DVR over the LAN.

The people who brought in the security folks put me in touch with someone at the security company who did some shopping, found a Honeywell DVR that advertised no software required - Honeywell lied, when they brought it in it was the same Hikvision they had already brought us rebranded.

Does anyone make a dedicated DVR that will work with a web-browser using nothing but web standards? HTML-5, h.264, Flash, JAVA, and even weird codecs that are semi-commonly used but less than h.264 are acceptable, but weird plugins that have no excuse to exist are a network security concern and are also a concern for long-term support, and are a real problem in a mixed Windows XP-8, Linux and OS X environment.

Also, does anyone know if i can just replace the crappy Hikvision distro with Zone Minder? I don't actually want to try it with the company equipment, but it would be something I would like to do on my own with a cheap Hikvision off of Amazon or eBay or something.

Hikvision is going to be your most likely supporting MAC users, There are others but I can't advise as the Hikvision is my only Mac experience (and it is a good one) The web interface on the Hikvision is the best I've seen in my opinion.

The web interface on the Hikvision is the best I've seen in my opinion.

The problem with that web interface is that from the moment I see it, even if I don't have legitimate access, I can be in administrator mode on the web interface in under three minutes. There's a built in admin account that can't be disabled on those systems, the good news it you can't just type in the user name and password to get in, raising the bar just a little, but you can (and I have) create a cookie with those credentials and take over the system.

This DVR needs to be on our internal network for our security guard to use AND on the real internet for our security company to remote monitor. I don't need a UNIX system that any twelve year old on a mission can own without even having to know how to use the good hacker utilities.

The web interface on the Hikvision is the best I've seen in my opinion.

 

The problem with that web interface is that from the moment I see it, even if I don't have legitimate access, I can be in administrator mode on the web interface in under three minutes. There's a built in admin account that can't be disabled on those systems, the good news it you can't just type in the user name and password to get in, raising the bar just a little, but you can (and I have) create a cookie with those credentials and take over the system.

 

This DVR needs to be on our internal network for our security guard to use AND on the real internet for our security company to remote monitor. I don't need a UNIX system that any twelve year old on a mission can own without even having to know how to use the good hacker utilities.

Try a dedicated micros dvr.

they are expensive but they have a native mac client and the web interface can be set to use a java client so it works on nearly any computer