Soundy

Depends on the MUX, but as a general rule, most aren't converting to digital, and there should be no loss at all.

Just to throw in my $0.02 (plus tax and service charges)... I don't have a problem with manufacturer reps and the like posting links and even outright propaganda for their products... IF it's in response to someone's question. For example, if I posted a question like, "What's a good PC-based DVR?", I would have no issue with Thomas going to town telling me all the great things about Video Insight complete with links to the website. Placing a limitation on that kind of response serves only to block the information I'm after, and any further questions I may ask ("Yeah, but does it slice bread?") may be useful to someone else as well. To my thinking, the standard definition of spam applies here: UNSOLICITED, commercial postings, such as some just starting up a thread out of the blue with, "Hey, everyone, come check out this website for my company's great new products!"

Reliablility is possibly THE primary consideration for a DVR; the extra 5%-10% speed you might get out of overclocking and other tweaking is pointless if you start getting crashes and lock-ups.

Agreed - ASUS make good solid boards, but they, and a lot of others, tend to have a lot of stuff you probably don't need: a gazillion onboard USB ports, 7.1 surround sound with optical I/O (unless you like to really immerse yourself in the surveillance experience), heavy-duty 3D video, and so on. Servers don't need a lot of extra stuff like that, and neither do DVRs. Disk I/O and good RAM capacity are more important concerns, for both servers and DVRs

No worries, I caught that too Just making conversation...

Actually, it took me no time at all to notice the distinct lack of heavy-handed moderation. Like I said, I may be new here, but I'm a real old-timer with message boards

I find moderation is only as hard as the moderator wants it to be. If you want to be super anal about things, it's obviously gonna be a lot more work; if you can allow yourself to allow the users to moderate themselves, I think you'll usually find it's a pretty easy job, and in this environment, should work out pretty well.

So please remove images from your signatures they will cause too much trouble for everyone involved. Thanks Larry Fair'nuff

Forget that... ever bought a wife on eBay?

Yeah, those are great... the ones I've worked with include a makeshift "compass" to draw a perfect circle to cutout for the size of the dome. VEry nice. I dunno about everyone else, but I was referring more to standard armored domes surface-mounted on the tiles.

For most basic domes, and stand-off/j-mount brackets for that matter, I find a 1-1/2" screw and a standard mid-sized drywall anchor turned on its side so the screw chews through it, works fine on ceiling tile. Repeat as necessary (3 or 4 times). Some scraps of plywood or similar are certainly preferable for heavier cameras, but the nylon anchors are plenty for most, and they're easy to keep a good stock of (many domes and mounts ship with them, in fact).

Yeah, I know what you mean... it's like when you buy a new car, and then it breaks down all the time, ya know...?

Gee, speaking of thread drift... this one's a pretty good example. Okay, I'm a relative n00b on this board, but an old hand at online fora of many types for the last 15+ years, as an admin, a moderator, and as just another user. In my short time here I've found the thread drift and hijacking here considerably lower than the average of what I've seen, probably mainly to do with the fact that most participants are here in a professional or semi-professional capacity to begin with. And really, a little thread drift now and then is, if not a good thing in itself, a good sign of a solid community: people become more familiar with each other over time, and with the familiarity comes more casual chat, and thus threads tend to wander. Excessive moderation, in my experience, tends to drive many of those people away, or at least severely curtail their participation. A little friendly chatter now and then is incentive to check in more often, participate more often... and as a side effect, weigh in on the important questions more often, with a broader base of knowledge and experience provided by a larger, more familiar user base. Sure, you may get more new users, but they're the types that tend to be higher turnover, and you end up with a forum with fewer people actually kicking in at any given time. Just some thoughts for y'all to mull over.

I was surprised to get no hits on a search for "Vigil" here... doesn't anyone here use CAMACC systems at all? They've got a pretty cool hi-def system, up to 1600x1200 capture with custom IP cameras, works with their standard DVR software... was hoping someone might actually be using them (I'd love to set one up but so far we don't have any clients willing to shell out that much ) ps. No, I don't work for CAMACC...

or at least broken into That woulda been priceless

Buddy gets into the lobby of a professional building using stolen(?) keys... hoists a shovel from the janitor's room (using the same keys), and rips off the pay phone. The real killer is that the janitor comes in later, sees the door to his closet open and can't help but notice the big hole on the wall where the phone used to be... he looks around the building, yet doesn't call the cops but simply goes about his duties (that was his last day on THAT job). http://www.lps-cctv.com/video_clips/phone_theft.wmv (approx. 25MB) Gotta see if I still have a copy of that idiot on the bike looking right into the camera (see http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=4484&start=30)

That's true... but on the other hand, it doesn't require a lot of intelligence to be a criminal, and they'll do some pretty stupid things. Example: I was asked to try to enhance a perp's face as he was filmed walking away from a vehicle break-in in an underground parking structure with an armload of stuff. He had a cap on and kept his head down so his face was not visible... BUT! Looking at the other cameras from the structure, I found an angle of him riding a bike in through the stuck-open security gate... then on the next camera caught him riding up under that camera, circling around once... and then LOOKING STRAIGHT UP INTO THE CAMERA. Got a STELLAR facial ID! From there he rode off toward the third camera, which captured him walking around the far side the vehicle (it was obvious from his clothing and the timestamp that it was the same person), then walking back with his ill-gotten booty. The client was happy... the investigating cop loved it! I never did hear if they caught the guy, but the cop said the perp was well-known to them. Well the stupid thing is, most people consider it a "false alarm" if the police get there and there are no perps around and nothing has been stolen... well if someone is trying to get in, sets off the alarm, and then bolts, isn't that the alarm doing its job? We had one city councillor here (Vancouver, BC) a few years ago, one of these crusty NIMBY me-me-me types, who was trying to have car alarms banned from his district, using the old "they don't do any good, they're all false alarms" bugaboo. When he was guest on a radio talk show, cops and insurance spokesmen all stated that car alarms work to reduce theft, that they are proven effective... but he refused to believe them. Caller after caller detailed how their vehicles had been broken into numerous times, and then never again since they'd got an alarm... and still he kept up his diatribe, insisting that these anecdotes were just anomalies and that alarms really were completely ineffective since they were almost all falses. If nothing else, an alarm draws peoples' attention - whether they're concerned about someone being broken into, or just pissed off at the noise, they ARE more likely to notice... and the last thing a thief wants is to have attention drawn to himself.

Owwwwww... I think DarwinAwards.com needs to open up a "Videos" section, starting with this one...

I'm all for automatic security updates... except on unattended systems. As Jasper noted, forced reboots CAN cause problems. Also, it's rare, but I have seen updates break some software and/or drivers, and even cause systems to BSOD after they're installed and the system rebooted. With a system that's supposed to be up 24/7, like a DVR, that may not be physically checked on a regular basis (I have one running in a comms closet in an underground parking structure that someone may not look in on for a month or two at a time, for example), do you really want to take the chance that an update may break something or it may not restart properly from a forced reboot, and potentially sit there for days or weeks waiting for some kind of interaction or repair? There's nothing like the 3am call from an irate user who's trying to pull up footage for the police officer who's standing right there, of a break-in that just happened a half hour before, and finds there IS no footage because the system is stuck at a "Are you sure you want to close ?" prompt.... Personally, I prefer the "Download updates but let me choose when to install them" option... then when and if I do check in on a system, I can apply any updates and make sure everything restarts the way it should while I'm sitting right there. And as rory said, if you've done a good job of securing the system beyond the defaults, you should be pretty safe. I won't hook a DVR up to the 'net without some sort of hardware isolation - at the very least, a basic $30-$50 residential broadband router provides a good physical separation from the 'net, and a lot of inherant security for the price.