CCTV System found in building, need guidance!

I am a Linux Network Sysadmin by trade, so computer command line and networking including multicast video is something I am fairly competent at. However today I started to play around with a CCTV Coax / IP based system which I am attempting to get working to some capacity then upgrade at some point.

The system looks like a Digital Recording Unit which has a built in 2TB drive and a number of coax video inputs. On top of this there are numerous cameras spanned around the building which all fed back into this and it recorded to the in built disk. No real problems there, the unit appears to work and the quality is "average", it appears to be SD with typical analogue dot crawl type artefacts.

The Digital Recording unit has network connectivity and going to the IP of the unit by a web browser presents a basic web page with all the current "live" feeds in a lots of small quicktime boxes.

1) What I wish to do is get this unit recording to a central unit, ie a Linux type box. I notice it supports RTSP over port 554 and also some form of "remote media" it was called with port 34567. Is there a way I can get these feeds showing up within something like VLC?

2) Once I get the video feeds to my central point, is there any particular piece of software which you can recommend to record or simply show these feeds in a nicer manner?

3) What would the next natural upgrade path of this unit be? Are units with HD-SDI expensive or are there any particular models which can be recommended?

Any guidance or advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

I would think that you would be aswell just upgrading the whole system rather than messing about looks like an average recording unit.

The unit may not support the HD cameras - probably have standard cameras hooked up at present -and so the unit may need to be upgraded along with the cameras- effectively a new system.

Unless you just want to play with it to see what you can do regarding forwarding the streams etc.

Hi. That unit is not all that old ..... You will find it will also run on the dahua PSS software and also there smart apps