Soundy

Cat5e is probably the easiest to pick up at your local Home Depot/Lowes/etc. A 1000' box should go for around $100 (or about 10 cents/ft. - you'll probably find it's 30-40 cents/ft. if you buy it pre-cut). For baluns, check out http://www.easterncctv.com/accessories/balun-p.htm. Last couple big jobs, I've been using this unit for the head-end: http://www.easterncctv.com/accessories/ev16p-vps.htm and these at the camera end: http://www.easterncctv.com/accessories/ev01p-vp.htm

That's like saying an Edsel is a better Ford than a Pinto A Ford is still a Ford - Found On Road Dead, Fix Or Repair Daily, etc. Windows 95 (and 98, and ME) weren't truly operating systems; they were task switchers with a fancy GUI that still ran on top of DOS. While everyone else was waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for Windows 95 to come out, we were running a four-line BBS on a 386 with 4MB RAM using IBM OS/2... remember that? That's what Windows was supposed to be before Microsoft decided IBM wasn't making it pretty enough, went out on their own, and created a fancy shell and task-switcher that still sat on top of DOS, rather an actually making a proper multitasking replacement for DOS. OS/2 did things in 1995 that Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to do.

Only if it's in direct sunlight. So much brick there... use a brick-colored paint, like this: http://www.rustoleum.ca/CBGProduct.asp?pid=104 Lots of tips online on creating textured finishes, too... just make it look like another brick hanging off the side of the house

Ummm, I believe someone already mentioned that. Are you not paying attention to what anyone is telling you? DON'T ASSUME. READ WHAT I POSTED ON THE LAST PAGE. Why am I bothering? People are trying to answer your questions on this thread and you're just ignoring them, blundering along talking to yourself and posting irrelevant links in an attempt to support some sort of technological conspiracy theories. I'm done. Have fun.

It's your room, and your elephant. There's nothing in that article you linked about CMOS or CCD or why Axis would use either. Whether a single 2MP camera is able to functionally replace four analog cameras is one of the oldest debates for the IP vs. analog crowd - the answer, as with everything else, is, "it depends". You haven't uncovered anything new or shocking or hidden here. There are no conspiracies to the choice of CCD vs. CMOS. If CMOS is preferred for IP cameras, it's probably no more complicated than the fact the already-digital signal is more readily processed, thus making it simpler and cheaper to design around. Again, there are NO technical limitations on the resolution of CCD sensors compared to CMOS.

There have to be studs somewhere, whether wood or steel. I'd try to align the thing so screws on one side go into a stud, then use EZ-anchors to secure the other side. If you need more support than that, put a piece of plywood across the studs, and mount to that.

Voltage... not current. POTS uses very low current.

^Yeah, something like that... ring signal is a 90V carrier at something like 8-10Hz, IIRC.

^Yeah, that's a nice design.

The CNB TDN cameras, and the 484, both come with IR-corrected lenses. And TDN camera that doesn't shouldn't even be considered. ABF isn't a fix for a non-IR-corrected lens.

Very likely - designed to go with the thin, flimsy cables provided with such kits.

BINGO! Okay, here's another perfect example: another recent site, we were told we weren't allowed to use fixed-blade knives... like your basic carpet knife, box cutter, Olfa knife, or utility knife. We ARE allowed to use "retractable blade" knives - like a utility knife with a spring-loaded blade, so if you're not holding it out, it slides back in: Now our first thought was, great, now we have to go buy new knives... our second thought was, hey, this is great, you're insisting that we use a tool that has the ability to draw a sharp blade across a body part... BY ITSELF. And the story came out of where this decision came from: a guy was using an Olfa knife (snap-off blade type) to cut a rubber boot on a hose down in a well in the ground. The blade was dull, so cutting was going really slowly. He took the knife out, snapped off the end of the blade to give himself a nice new fresh edge, then went back to cutting... except now with the sharp new edge, it slid through the rubber boot like butter... and gashed his other fore-arm. The natural response to this was to ban any fixed-blade knives. So wait... when I was FIVE and my dad was teaching me to whittle wood with my pocket knife, the FIRST THING he taught me was, CUT AWAY FROM THE BODY. Which this idiot didn't do. And he hurt himself. So because idiotstick can't follow THE FIRST, PRIMARY, MOST BASIC RULE OF USING A KNIFE, nobody else gets to use them anymore?? REACTION. NO THOUGHT. Don't get rid of the idiot... get rid of the tool that he misused. My buddy was telling this story to a staff girl in Home Depot... she said they have the same rule: only people working in flooring can use fixed knives; anyone else has to use self-retracting types. First offence, they get written up... second offence: fired. And it turns out, one girl actually had happen to her, exactly what we thought would happen: she let go of the blade, the sharp side was against a finger, and under its own power, the knife pulled the blade in and sliced her finger open...

Plus, Cat3, Cat5, and other such wires are easy to coil into a gang box, or push back into a wall gap... doing that with a bundle of RG-59 is not so easy. You'd have to cut the wires really short to minimize the amount that resides behind the plate, which makes them a lot harder to work on, and leaves you little extra in case something goes wrong. Plus you have the power connectors - this setup is obviously designed to allow individual wall-wart adapters to simply plug directly in. It's not suitable if you're using a central power can. Sorry, but something like this is just not practical for most installs.

That's what something like this is good for: That's done mainly so you can terminate a cable run (or many runs) without having something hooked up, and so you can quick-disconnect to move a device somewhere else. You're unlikely to be moving your DVR all over the house.

Looks like something meant to reside behind the DVR and send your various home runs out from there - short patch cables to the BNCs, and individual wall-wart power supplies that you can just plug in to the plate. I can see it maybe being of interest to a DIYer at home, but honestly, I can't see ever using something like this in a professional install - it's less work and money to just pull the runs through the wall and terminate them at the DVR and power can.

Seriously... we had the head safety guy for one of them tell us, "If you need to rent a lift, do it - I don't care what it costs as long as everyone goes home safe." Hey, I'm all for working off a lift instead of a ladder whenever possible, but somehow I doubt their motives are altruistic in the least - it's all liability a$$-covering. The one that doesn't allow any ladders at all... this is the story they gave us explaining why: several years ago, a worker in Ontario was working on a short step ladder, and whether he didn't have it on a stable surface, or just stepped wrong, he fell off a low step, landed on his arse, and whacked his head on the ground, leaving him with permanent brain damage. His wife sued everyone in site, and finally, a bit over three years later, won a multi-million dollar settlement against the parent company... probably for "failing to provide a safe work environment" or something. As a result, they decided that the solution was to simply ban ladders. The ridiculous part is, they told use we could use scaffolds instead... my wife works in the insurance industry, and she said that they HATE scaffolds, because they're a dozen time more UN-safe than ladders. Far too easy to tip them over, or assemble them wrong and have them collapse. The first site we saw this on, one electrician needed to get just three feet off the ground in a little electrical room... when he asked how he was supposed to get a scaffold in there, he was told he could just assemble it in the room... even one of those little wee "painter's scaffolds" would have had a hard time fitting in this room, nevermind leaving anyone room to get in with it to be able to climb on top of it! But they don't care how much it impedes work - they're covering their arses.

Oh yeah, you don't want to risk bonking your head with the ladder when you take it off the top of the van...

For the oil companies, we're expected to wear minimum PPE to do *any* work, install or service, on *any* site. If I'm going to sit in front of the computer in the office, I still have to be wearing steel-toed boots, hard hat, and reflective vest... and I'm expected to have work gloves and safety glasses on my person, "just in case". They say "stop and think" but then the allow no latitude for any kind of rational choice - they've already done the thinking for you. It's utter insanity, and all of it comes from them being entirely reactionary - something happens, someone gets hurt, they take forever to figure out what went wrong... then go completely over the top in attempting to prevent it happening again. I swear, it's going to get to the point where we just show up on site wearing nothing but several layers of bubble wrap.

The oil companies here have now as a group mandated that you're not allowed to work from a step ladder over 5' off the ground, unless you have fall protection (harness... and find something to tie off to). WCB puts the limit at 10', and also mandates that an extension ladder must be tied off at the top (hard to do for a camera in the middle of a wall). One oil company has now also decreed that there are NO LADDERS ALLOWED on construction sites. AT ALL. Scaffolding, lift, or work platform only. Extension ladders are acceptable only for accessing higher locations (roof, canopy top, etc.), and of course, must be tied off. Oh yes, the work platform... this is essentially a short step ladder with a solid platform part way up... kinda like this: The catch is, the platform itself cannot be over 5' either. Every one of these I've looked at have platforms at 2' spacing - 4', 6', 8' etc. That means we can only use the 4' ones - last site, that was barely enough for me to push up a ceiling tile, and not enough to actually reach into the ceiling to do any work.

Personally, I'd just use a separate PoE switch for the cameras. The Cisco model we normally use would be ideal: eight 10/100 PoE ports for the cameras, use of of the two GbE uplink ports to connect to the existing switch. 1U, half width, so it's actually half the size... NexTag search puts the injector at ~$300, which is a bit more than the switch goes for (NexTag lists the SFE-1000P at $250).

Well you didn't say how far you wanted it to "extend". The VCM-24VF comes with a 2.8-10.5mm lens (that IS listed on the site)... any camera will "see" to the horizon (or the first obstruction, whichever comes first), the difference is in how wide a view vs. how much detail. For a "long range" camera, with no definition of what "long range is", you're probably looking at a box-style camera with sufficiently long lens... but without knowing how far it is to the subject and what size the area of interest is, it's impossible to say how long that lens needs to be.

Cost of the camera is irrelevant - if it needs to go up high, it needs to go up high.

^I was wondering the same thing...

And I'll take one for you where the Cat5 all terminates in a patch panel, with patch cables from there into a rackmounted PSU/balun unit. Very clean - much cleaner than having separate wire runs to a wall-mounted power supply. Clusterf*ckery is a result of a careless or lazy installer, nothing to do with the type of cable and connectors used. I could show you some all-coax-and-18/2 installations that are utter spaghetti bowls, too.