Soundy

Pretty fancy. I dunno that I woulda paid $99 for it... looks like a $50 WiFi camera attached to a $25 motion floodlight. Nevertheless... As you've already discovered, you need a DVR card of some sort. Most of those will have BNC inputs, so you'll need a BNC/RCA adapter to go with whichever cable you use. You'll find GeoVision are popular hearabouts. I'm not a fan of their clunky interface and software/card version complications, but their stuff seems solid for the price. Tip: only purchase from a legitimate vendor; most stuff you'll find on fleaBay claiming to be "GeoVision" tends to be clone cards that don't work reliably. Another tip: don't get too hung up on audio recording... in most cases, there's so much background noise, what you get is largely useless (especially outdoors). Not sure what you're after here... are you running multiple monitors? Different cameras to different monitors?

Seems to me that's what we heard last year. I take it back, this can't be Todd... not articulate enough. Sounds more like Scott.

Not everyone has 16 cameras ready to go on their test bench I have three analog and two IP cameras for my home setup, personally... if I needed to feed more channels for the sake of a demo, splitting the output of my cable box would be the easiest.

I notice you conveniently sidestep the cost/hardware/power requirement questions. I've found this to be typical of the Alliance shills. Just show the pretty pictures and avoid the real-world implications.

It was, actually Welcome aboard!

Not having worked with fiber myself, I can't offer any specific experience on maintenance and troubleshooting, but just off the cuff: Fiber tends to be spendy, but 30x400m of copper (12km total!) will add up quickly as well. You could use a couple of 15-pair-or-more multicore cables with baluns, but even that will add up fast. Fiber will certainly leave you more expandability, since you'll be able to run IP over it as well, should you start to migrate to that in the future. It should have more capacity for additional analog cameras, too.

3xLogic Vigil. If you're looking for more of the compact, standalone type, check out their MVR series: http://www.3xlogic.com/prod/983/mvr-series-micro-video-recorder

...and stupid me actually clicks on it. Quick, someone get me the eyebleach!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge Not unlike shotgun gauge, where a 20-gauge is smaller than a 12-gauge (although in that case, the number refers to the number of lead balls of the barrel's diameter that it takes to make 1lb... how obtuse is that?? )

http://www.google.ca/search?q=station+z+wire Depends on the size of your ass If you're running heater/blower enclosures at longer distances, I'd probably go with 16/2.

Do you (or he) have enclosures in mind for these? I'm not aware of any box cameras that are suitable for outdoor use without being in environmental housings. Doesn't mean anything without knowing what they need to cover - ie. how much area, field of view, width of the entrance/exit area, etc. How much detail is needed - ability to identify faces, license plates, nose hairs...? Are these vehicle entrances, personnel entrances? How are lighting conditions - do they need to be able to see at night? Is there much ambient light? With south and east facing, will backlighting be an issue? If the exit camera is intended to identify people leaving, shouldn't it be mounted directly above the exit, looking west, so you're not looking at the backs of their heads? Well that narrows it down from thousands of options to only hundreds

No. They are (according to the marketing hype at least) high-definition digital cameras (hence the "HD" - they use HDTV protocols and specs) that send uncompressed HD video over a single coax line by using SDI (Serial Digital Interface), a standard that's been used for years in the broadcast industry for digital data. When I worked at a tech school a decade or so ago, one of the old U-Matic tape machines had an SDI interface for the audio output. IIRC one of the newer Betacam SP decks had SDI in *and* out for audio as well. Their main claims of "superiority" are for the live video (realtime, since there's no compression/conversion happening in-camera, thus no lag time; plus being uncompressed, it's higher quality), and the ability to simply plug them into existing coax (which as you see here, some have had varying success with). So far, aside from this thread, I've seen NO claims of the ACTUAL cost of the new cameras (I have asked directly)... only that it "will be cheaper" than IP. Some of the things they gloss over or simply dismiss when asked about it, are the facts that in addition to new cameras, you need new capture/interface hardware (you can't just plug them into a standard existing capture card)... and that to get any sort of realistic retention time, your PC has to do all the compression, since it's now not being done on the camera and uncompressed 720P video will eat terabyte drives for breakfast. I've seen no claims on the cost of the interface hardware either, or whether it will do its own hardware compression, or require the PC to do all the work (expect cost savings on the cameras to be offset by the need for more powerful PCs). At this point, there's not really anything on the market (that I've seen, anyway), just promises and glossy ads and lots of marketing hype. I see tests published by the manufacturers who've signed on, but have yet to see any third-party, REAL-WORLD tests, comparisons or samples.

Difference is, you can actually walk into a store and buy stuff that uses HDMI.

Okay, the Setup Guide FINALLY finished downloading... here's what it's got: SERIAL 1 – 9-way (Male) D-type RS-232 serial port (PPP modem). SERIAL 2 – 9-way (Male) D-type RS-232/RS485 serial port (Telemetry). Reading on through the setup instructions, it appears SERIAL 1 is designed ONLY for use with a modem to make a dialup internet connection... and SERIAL 2 is designed ONLY for use with PTZ cameras and other such devices to be controlled by the DVR. There's nothing to indicate either will work to allow terminal access to the machine.

Well I see from the photos on the DM site, it looks like both ports are DTE, which means IF the ports are intended to allow remote access (still not convinced they area), you need to use a "null modem" (crossover) cable to connect to it - in short, you need to cross pins 2 and 3 between them (pin 2 on the PC goes to pin 3 on the DVR, and vice-versa). As for the ftp thing, it wouldn't be hard to get the login and password - set up your own ftp server (lots of freeware ones out there) and point DM's FTP client at that: the ftpd's logs should show the login info.

^^What they said

We use RG59 pretty much exclusively, never had a problem with it. When we did some FLIR cameras, the dealer recommended RG6 because it's lower impedance and we had runs of several hundred feed, and he said the cameras would give a clearer picture with the RG6... I don't know if how much that really mattered, but we went with the RG6 for that anyway. Other than that though, the only other times we've used RG6 was when it was supplied to us for some sub jobs. Stuff was super-stiff and a PITA to work with. We also used it on the same jobs for satellite dish feeds. Never say never - there's always the possibility of water getting into the conduit. Might be UNLIKELY, but the chance always exists. Uhh... what housing? Some housings just have a hole there, but the fittings should all come with a locking ring for that. If the housings have threaded inlets, they'll probably be either 1/2" or 3/4"; if you're using 1/2" and the housing has a 3/4" inlet, you can just use a threaded reducer. I'm not a fan, personally. I find the wire a PITA to pull in a lot of cases - it doesn't bend evenly. When we use coax, it's usually RG59, and four-conductor "station-Z" wire for power (doubled-up). This ensures there's always a spare pair of conductors for those "just in case" occurrences down the road. As long as both use the same voltage, there should be no problem powering both off a single run. What I'll often do, using the station wire, is split out one pair to the camera and one pair to the heater. The only thing to watch for is if the fuse feeding that run has a large enough rating that the heater/blower kicking in won't pop it. 3) Cheaper to go coax and use cat5 as power or is cat5 too thin? ALL FOUR PAIRS for power is probably okay... according to this calculator you should see only 1.5V drop using 24V @ 1A over 500'. If your power supply does 28V, it should be fine. That said, 24V @ 500mA would only see 1.5V drop over three pairs, so you could use the fourth for video, and forgo the coax altogether... You want copper braid, ideally 95% coverage. Run, don't walk, away from aluminum.

Arecont also has a backfocus adjustment ring. And (based on the 3155DNs at least) it's horribly cheap and shaky.

That is one of the major points I have brought up to Todd Rockoff and he says that "version 2 of the HDcctv spec will allow up to 300 meters on RG59". On the discrepancy between the spec and the actual need to use RG6, dead silence! Version 1 of the HDcctv spec calls for up to 100 meters on RG59. I wonder what other aspects of the spec are not being met? That's why all this HDcctv blather grates on me: it reminds me so much of Microsoft in the Windows 95 days. Hey, check out this great new thing, it will do everything! Okay, it's not actually available yet, but it's coming REAL SOON NOW! Okay, it's here now... it doesn't QUITE do it all... but the NEXT version will! REAL SOON NOW! Blah blah blah.

Hardly! 25-pair CAT5 takes up far less space in cable trays and conduits than 25 RG59s. That is a very prime reason for twisted-pair analog.! $$$ is a big reason for MOST decisions, for starters. Using UTP for your video - whether analog or IP - makes lots of sense in a new installation: UTP can be used for networks (IP and otherwise), phone, alarm, analog CCTV, analog HDTV (RGB/component)... it can be used with KVM extenders, VGA extenders, HDMI extenders (not cheap in themselves, but that's beside the point). In short: UTP (Cat5e/Cat6) is just far more versatile - a single four-pair UTP run can, in a pinch, carry 10/100 ethernet, a channel of analog video, and a phone line... or any other number of combinations of signals. A coax run can carry... well... one video feed. Or one network feed (with appropriate adapters). If you're doing a new install, particularly a large-scale install, it just makes more sense to spec a wad of UTP, rather than mixing-and-matching different types of cables. It's easier to do a multiple pull of the same type of cable, rather than mixing-and-matching. It's more cost-effective to use only one type of cable rather than mixing-and-matching, especially if you're getting bulk pricing. HDcctv may be a viable upgrade path for existing coax, but I certainly wouldn't want to spec it for a new high-level job - putting in new coax is just too... retro. Too short-sighted.

Not knowing exactly what a "D4" is (brand? full model number?), I can generally state that a serial port on a DVR is usually designed for output only, to control cameras and other devices through RS-232/485... or it may not be a serial port at all, but simply alarm inputs or outputs. Even if it does accept input, the DVR itself would still need to be running an appropriate terminal service. As for ftp - same thing, the DVR would need to be running an ftpd service in the first place. I've not yet seen one that does this (although to be fair, I rarely deal with standalone units).

yup - like I said, "as long as there's nothing else wrong"

How are you determining it's 37 ohms? A standard multimeter won't properly measure impedance.

Todd, is that you???

Video Insight can, if you're looking for a PC-based system - www.demovi.com