Soundy

This doesn't make any sense - is your cable modem an internal card? If it's an external box of some sort, as almost all of them are, I don't see any way your capture card could be affecting it. It might be conflicting with your network card, but that still should have no effect on the modem...

I'm assuming you need every mic recorded separately, so using a mixer to blend the mics down to a few channels is out? Your best bet might be to look into devices designed for studio use, which can have 8, 16, 24, 32 or more inputs (like this one, for example: http://www.dv247.com/invt/30292/). That might be overkill, quality-wise, but it's probably your most efficient off-the-shelf option. The downside is that most of them have an equal number of outputs and are usually balanced I/O, which add to the cost and are probably unnecessary for your purposes. Of course, if you're building your own pre-amps already, you may be ahead to simply design and build your own 200-input encoder device...

A "capture card" generically is any computer add-on that's used to "capture" video. This can include TV-tuner cards and USB modules, which will usually only have one or two video inputs, and multiple inputs are usually of different types (composite, S-video, component) and still only feed a single encoder - in other words, most consumer capture cards can only record a single video source. A "DVR card" is a specialized capture card that TYPICALLY (not always, but usually) has multiple encoders, multiple inputs, and only accepts composite video - in short, they're designed to simultaneously record multiple video sources.

I've used a variety of wiring for PTZ control - 18/2 shielded/untwisted, Cat-3, Cat-5e, 22/2 unshielded, etc. As others have noted, it depends partly on the distance. We're running Cat-5e to cameras more and more often (to allow future expansion to IP cameras), using video baluns for analog video and running power over two pairs, and where PTZ is required, you then still have one pair available for serial.

My co-worker just picked up an Archos - little pricier, but hi-res screen, and can be a video source as well (test signals, etc.). Also comes with a wrist strap, so you can keep both hands free.

Try VideoInsight?

I see that all the time in board cameras, cheap or not. Most of them will have separate wires coming out for power and video, but if you look inside, almost all 12VDC-powered cameras share the ground at some point.

Anyone here familiar with integrating a newer Squirrel POS system with a DVR? Even experience interfacing it to a TVS overlay system would help - I have a working serial connection between the Squirrel back-end machine and my DVR, where the DVR simply captures and logs the data, but need to configure the Squirrel to output it for me... and Squirrel themselves are being completely useless.

Well, as an educated guess, I'd say red should be +12VDC, yellow would be video out, white is audio out, and black would be a common ground for all three.

Well, with 6 pins, it can be almost any a few dozen different combinations. Best way to go about this is to open the camera up and determine which wires are connected to which components (power, video, audio), then use a multimeter or continuity tester to determine which wires are connected to which pins. Sorry I can't be much more help than that, but there are just too many different possibly variations to just guess at it.

Yeah, that's the best advice - if you're building a PC-based DVR, you really want it to be a dedicated machine used ONLY for the DVR. DVR activity can significantly slow the machine down for other uses; other activity can also affect the DVR's recording. And of course, if you crash the machine, you're not recording until it reboots; if you get a virus or spyware on it, you could end up with a pooched DVR. New systems can be had around here for $250 or less, and they're more than powerful enough for a basic home DVR. Or upgrade your home machine and turn the old one into a DVR.

I'd be amazed if that thing ever had a "make and model". What sort of info are you trying to find on it? Pinouts for its cable?

Alas, this is true - make anything idiot-proof, and the universe will always come up with a better idiot.

Yes, you can run multiple cameras on a single Cat-5/6. Each camera needs only two pair - one for video, one for power. Be aware though, that with the thin wire, you may see significant voltage drop over longer runs, especially with cameras that draw more current. In an extreme pinch, you could even run three cameras with power over a single Cat-5/6, using three pair for the cameras and one pair for power to all three... but that will make the potential voltage drop even worse. This is POSSIBLE, but not really recommended. Also, I don't know how these practices would work with NVT's hub and transceiver products, as I've never used those - all my use of baluns has been single runs.

Agreed, especially since space is so cheap these days ($200 for 1TB). The only catch is where you run into other limitations in space - on the last one of these I did, 8 1TB drives in an 8-bay rack, RAID 6 would have been nice, but the 6.5TB we got from RAID 5 (with system and parity overhead) was bare minimum for the retention we were trying to achieve; RAID 6 would have cost another 1TB of that, and the next step up would have been to a 16-bay rack at substantially higher cost. Most good enclosures/cards, though, will give you a pretty hard-to-ignore warning if a drive fails, so you can swap it out before anything further happens...

Well, that partially depends on the software you're using - I know the latest versions of the Vigil software, you can specify the amount of space to reserve for Alarm and POS Alarm triggers, but aside from that it will record until it fills the designated drives. Capture allows you to specify how much space to use on each of your defined drives, and Video Insight allows you to define how much free space to keep on each drive. But really, drive space is so cheap these days (1TB SATA drives start under $200) and with PCs it's usually easy to add all the space you can afford, whether with additional internal drives, USB/Firewire/eSATA drives, or with a variety of SAN solutions (I just recently set up a system with 3TB storage internally, and an 8TB RAID-5 network array).

Well, it seems most agree... never having used an AverMedia anything, I can't say one way or the other. I know I've installed a lot of really cheap, really lame standalone DVRs for people who didn't want to spend any money, and then were unhappy with the results. One standalone I've used that I do like was a Digital Watchdog (couldn't tell you a specific model offhand). But that aside, I'm a fan of PC-based DVRs in general. IMHO controlling and searching with a point-and-click interface is worlds above navigating a bunch of buttons and maybe a wheel, especially when you have to keep looking back and forth from the screen to the panel.

Nothing to do with inert gas (never heard that one, myself)... the wires are generally sealed (rubber grommet, blob of silicone, whatever) coming out of the camera, AND the camera generally doesn't cover or enclose the hole where the wires go through to the warm air (either outside the cooler, or inside the building). Remember, the trick in both cases is not NOT have warm moist air on one side of the glass (or Lexan or plastic) and cold air on the other side...

An NVR by definition works only with IP cameras ("NETWORK Video Recorder"), so the first thing you need to do is figure out if you're willing to shell out for all IP cameras; if you're wanting some IP and some analog, or all analog, then you need a DVR or DVR/NVR hybrid. And NVR by itself will probably be cheaper (because there's no capture hardware required), but the cameras will tend to cost more, so you need to balance those requirements. Also, NVRs are not limited by hardware when it come to expansion - you get an eight-channel DVR, and load all eight inputs with cameras, and you won't be able to add another camera without a significant hardware upgrade. NVRs are entirely software-based (well, not including the machine they're built on, but they don't require specialized video hardware), and if anything are simply limited by license - need more cameras, upgrade your license. Need to go from eight to ten cameras, you just add two more to the license, rather than needing to bump up to 16-channel hardware. Thomas has a good question here - is this ABSOLUTELY necessary, and what is your internet connection like? Doing this can chew up a TON of bandwidth and very likely wouldn't be able to happen in realtime. If, for example, you have a DSL connection with a 128kbit upstream, you'd be lucky to be able to upload a couple of images per minute (PERIOD, not per camera!), forget about live full-motion video. Pretty much all of them will do this. Some will only allow you one camera at a time, with a sequence switching between your specified cameras; others will give a multiplexed, split-screen output (at additional cost, usually), but any of them should allow you to select which cameras are and aren't displayed. Some will also allow you to "hide" cameras on your office monitor as well (in case you don't want employees seeing that covert camera you have over the safe, for example). I have yet to run across one that SPECIFICALLY supports sending an SMS, but most wireless carriers will let you email an SMS to a phone - usually it's in the format of @... for example, for me, you can email 6045551212@text.telus.net (not my actual number, of course) and it gets delivered to my phone as an SMS. Check with your wireless provider for details. Yes. A very few (very cheap) standalone DVRs I've dealt with only output composite video, but the vast majority have VGA output available. Computer-based DVRs, of course, always use VGA as their main output. That would depend on the machine... none of the VGA-capable standalone units I've seen support widescreen properly. All of the CURRENT PC-based ones I work with do, since it's dependent on the video driver more than the DVR/NVR software (a few older ones are more rigid - some only work at 1024x768 resolution, for example, but those are largely obsolete anyway).

There are lots of those solutions out there - all depends on what sort of "protection" you're after. There are programs like Deep Freeze, that will automatically restore your machine to a designated backup point every time it boots up (we used to use this when I worked in a tech school and students would do all sorts of insane things to the rendering workstations - just reboot, and the machine is back to its installed state). And there are programs like Transparent Screen Lock, that's invisible until you tap the mouse or a key, and then it throws up a login prompt - I use this one DVRs regularly, instead of a screensaver (or working AS the screensaver), because it leaves the desktop visible. It can be set to lock immediately upon bootup as well. Linux and *nix-based systems are much more reliable as well, because the filesystems can be locked down a lot deeper than with Windows, without causing other problems. Some Windows-based systems also replace the Windows Explorer with their own shell, thus blocking user access to the desktop, drive objects, and command prompts. Capture's IDR-series systems have done this for... probably ten years now (first IDR system I worked with was running on Windows 98 and even that was virtually impenetrable without using a boot disk). In the end, none of these solutions will block someone who's TRYING to do damage (and standalone systems are just as vulnerable to physical damage and the determined hacker), but they are very effective against your basic idiot just klutzing around trying to read his Hotmail.

Or just click here: http://scorpiontheater.com/Documents/CP%20Network_Setup.pdf Hint: web documents should not have spaces or punctuation in their filenames.

The DVR doesn't know what time of day it is, it just plays back what it records, and it records whatever it's fed. That narrows it down the cameras. If the camera has an auto-iris lens, the suggestion to focus it at night applies - when it's bright out, the iris closes down, and the depth of field increases, so there's a lot longer range where the camera is in focus. At night, when the iris opens up, the range of focus becomes a lot narrower and might require re-focusing. If you can post still shots of both day and night pictures though, it would be a lot easier to see what's going on...

Nope... it generally comes in where the wires come in, if it's not sealed well. Some domes have the wires sealed with a grommet where they enter the enclosure, but most I've worked with don't... so you have to be sure to seal them.

Pelco EH3508

I've installed both - usually the only time we go with heaters is if the client specs them. I haven't noticed a difference either way in any of the ones I've done. If you DO get condensation in the dome, a heater can help keep the view clear, but if that's happening because of warm air "leaking" into the dome, it's generally only a matter of time until the dome fills with water and kills the camera anyway - in other words, the heater in that instance is only addressing a symptom while not addressing the actual problem.