SEANHAWG

Your best bet is to contact the manufacturers directly and see if you can: 1) Buy directly from them or 2) Have them point you to a distributor of their products for your area. This is the best route to go.

I have dealt with 2MCCTV quite a bit and have been very pleased with their customer service. PM sent.

Then why not get the Samsung DVR that you mentioned? Has everything you need and want so you may as well snatch it up. I have worked with Samsung DVR's quite a bit and I love them.

I have never used an HDMI cable with all of the DVR's we test so I couldnt tell you for sure, but I imagine that you will only be able to tell a difference in clarity during live viewing. During playback, I imagine that the resolution will be just the same as if you were using an RCA cable running directly to the TV. And if you are using Analog cameras, which I think you are, your security cameras are not capable of putting out 1920X1080 resolution anyways.

I have noticed that on a few of the various Standalone DVR's that we test the DVR immediately gives all of our cameras a real bright effect and the colors are not very vibrant, just real white looking. I noticed this on a couple of used DVR's that we have tested in the past and we just received a protoype in that does the same thing. Even after changing the color settings, it still does not have as vibrant colors as I like. And when I do change the color settings to make it a little dimmer, the picture starts to get fuzzy and not as crisp. All this is during live viewing too. We have some old multiplexers and they give superb colors just as if you were running the camera directly into the monitor. What could be causing this? Is it just a piece of junk DVR that is not able to process the colors good or what? Has anyone else seen this problem when testing various DVR's? And when looking at spec sheets or technical data, is there anything that I can look for to avoid this in the future.

BNC to VGA converter is what you need to get a VGA output. Converter costs around $15-40 depending on where you get it. Dont know much about converting BNC to HDMI but I highly doubt it will have any effect on the image resolution at all since your DVR is probably not a Hi-Def DVR or NVR. I wouldnt go there. I also doubt you will have any issues with burn-in. We use tube TV's as monitors which are more prone to burn in than LCD's and we havent had an issue.

I didnt read through all of the long arse comments that were posted on this thread but if you havent done this already, try contacting Honeywell Security. We have dealt with alot of their products and found their support to be pretty helpful.

I second Adams recommendations. Get some cheap IR illuminators if you dont feel like lighting up the area with lights.

I am sorry if I wasnt clear on what I meant. I did not mean that the cable was a solid one piece power wire. I was still referring to the stranded power wires but from what I have found, most of the siamese cable has copper clad stranded wires as opposed to solid copper stranded wires. It seemed like all my cable suppliers said they would have to special order me some of this stuff because they didnt stock it. From what I have found, most of the siamese cable on the market is like this, online and brick and mortar stores alike. There is a large CCTV wholesaler here in my hometown who acted like this was totally out of the norm to have the type of cable that had solid copper stranded wires. And even one of my suppliers in California who specializes only in cable had to special order me the cable that had the solid copper stranded wires because he only stocked the cable with the solid copper coax core with the copper clad stranded wires. And this company sells alot of this cable to several CCTV retailers throughout the nation. So I was just curious to see if anyone else uses siamese cable that had the solid copper coax core but has copper clad stranded power wires. I would bet that alot of folks arent aware until they cut a piece off and look at it because most cable spec sheets do not spec out whether the stranded wires are solid copper or copper clad.

I am curious to see how many of you guys that use siamese cable use the cable that has solid copper stranded power wires. I was astounded to find out how readily the market had cable with a solid copper coax core but the power wires were copper clad and how somewhat sparse the supply was for both solid copper coax and solid copper power wires. I called a couple of reputable CCTV suppliers here in town and they acted like the copper clad power wires were the norm and they didnt even stock the siamese cable with solid copper power wires. One guy told me that solid copper power wires will conduct at longer lengths, but power over copper clad is going to run at least as far as the video is going to run. Even one of my big time cable suppliers in California didnt have that type of siamese cable in stock. If you have never done it before, cut open your siamese cable and check to see what is copper clad and what is solid copper.

Need alot more info. Do you have your protocols matched up? Do you have your baud rate and camera ID matched up?

You'll be dissapointed to find out that Sewell's cable is copper coated aluminum not only for their power wires but the Coax cable as well. What is even more wierd is that there shielding is even copper coated aluminum, 95% copper coated aluminum. They are very deceptive on their advertising on eBay as well, they say solid copper conductor, but when you read the specs, it says solid copper coated aluminum. Here is a link their spec sheet: http://sewelldirect.com/download/drivers/rg59%20siamese%20cable.pdf

These have been catching my eye for a while and I was thinking about ordering one of these to try out. I was checking to see if anyone else have had any experience? If so, can you recommend a particular model #? They look pretty sweet, here is the link to their page: http://www.samsung-security.com/products/cameras/a1.php

I bought an easycap but I dont think it would be good for DVR purposes, there are no adjustable frame rate options, motion detection, or other things you would find in a normal surveillance DVR application. I think they are meant for short video clips and such, not long term recordings. Of course that was just the experience with my EasyCap, they may make CCTV versions that I dont know about.

Yes sorry, I misunderstood.

I dont think its possible. I have done some research and its impossible to get past the software that they have loaded on these machines to use them for any type of CCTV purpose.

Unless you have a single channel DVR card there would be no need to have a multiplexer. If you are going to get a multi channel DVR card such as an 8 or 9 channel, there is no need to have the multiplexer really since the DVR card basically acts as a multiplexer and a recorder all in one. If you do plan on going the single channel DVR card route, I question the ability for the multiplexer to demux the video when it is ran through a DVR card. I have never used a multiplexer with a DVR card, perhaps anyone else who has can chime in.

From what I have seen, a good brand name IP megapixel camera goes higher than $600.

Yeah, I know how vintage products are in style nowadays. Let me get a value from the Antiques Road Show and get back to you with a price.

I got this on one the loads of equipment that we received from one of the retailers that we contract with. I think they used this thing to look over their Atari section back in the day:

We received in a Clover 8 channel DVR that a retailer was using as one of their DVR's in their system, that was actually really nice. The recording quality was some of the best that I have seen on a DVR but it was sold just as a single DVR, meaning it did not come as a package box deal. We also now have a clover 4 channel DVR that I think came off of a retail store display, this one is not so good, probably about as good as using a quad processor and a VCR in my opinion, the quality is just not there. I have seen the same thing with Samsung products. Some of their commercial grade security products are excellent but then they sell those security package deals that you see at Sams that have the IR fixed focal lens cameras that have the telephone line connections. Those are junk and I dont know why Samsung would even sell that stuff because it gives them a bad name compared to all of their other good stuff that they have. We receive in lots of store display package systems from various major retailers, the only thing that is worth anything on the system is the DVR and sometimes those arent that great. But the cameras are almost always not worth anything, the optics are just worthless.

Yeah if you have a good low light camera, it may be good just to have a good night light on at night for your indoor scenario. I prefer to do that as opposed to using infrared illuminators. Of course in some cases, infrared is necessary.

Clover has good stuff and cheap stuff too. Whats the model #?

If you are strongly concerned about the cold, you could just get a housing with a heater in it.

I agree with Soundy, we get in tons of scratched up dome cameras but after installing them they still give out a crystal clear picture. Even if there is a scratch in the field of view, its hardly noticeable unless its a giant scratch, and in that case, just rotate the cover as Soundy said.