You mentioned you're in rural darkness at night. Rural darkness at night is like nothing else. My night here in NY is nowhere near as dark as night is up in PA at my dads house. Once you're beyond exterior light there, you can't see the hand in front of your face. So the first thing you want to do is be sure you have exterior light everywhere you plan to point a camera. That goes doubly true if you're gonna use MP cameras. Cameras provide a much improved night picture when you provide exterior light. Even if you buy IR cameras, the picture won't be as good in darkness as it would be with exterior light. At minimum, you should have a steady on exterior light at all doors to the house. On the sides of the house, you can have motion lights that come on only when something or someone trips them and the cameras there could have IR so they can see somewhat when the lights are off. But before your camera system, be sure you have proper lighting installed. Crooks hate that and cameras love it.

If you thought my video had a good picture of the Dahua camera, considering the video for youtube is compressed even more, you might be fine with an analog system. If you want the much improved pictures an MP system provides, go for it. But a decent analog setup might be all you need and save you some serious bucks. So many times it seems people make installing a cctv system a HARD thing to accomplish. It doesn't have to be. Simply buy a full D1 dvr, good varifocal cameras, provide adequate exterior lighting, and that's mostly it. And if you can't get past the inherent 'fuzziness' of even the best that analog can give you, go with MP. But make sure your budget is that much bigger. The hardest thing should only be the physical pain of install. There's too much good gear for that part of it to be hard. Good luck