HipsterDoofus

Those are qualitative definitions not a citation CCTV's attributes and properties. However, Wiki is completely open source, you are entirely free to submit your definition to the public encyclopedia. You're also welcome to open the same argument with Clover, but that would be like walking into every NYC pizzeria and argue that their pizza is not the "Best Pizza In NYC." peace out.

. . . okay, i'll bite. How do *you* define CCTV? And please note you can't define something by what it isn't.

From Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCTV: Here is the logo from the Clover home page:

Ordered four Clover OB220 B/W Outdoor Sun Visor Cameras. Two of them failed after two days of outdoor operation. I think it's best to avoid anything made by Clover.

Very wise words . . . I may accept your advice simply as a personal challenge. There is something noble and honorable about offering utter human debris a certain level of respect. It isn't easy to do. In the long run it may prevent a very simple, stupid matter from becoming tragic. Apparently he was trying to explain to the officer that he did not know there was a house across the street from him, so it is ok to hit golf balls in that general direction. So some stranger just comes along and posts a camera in an empty lot. About a month ago a construction crew tore up my front yard and just drove off. The cam was very hurriedly posted in my front yard to keep an eye out for any further damage. You should hear my trespass & criminal damage stories . . . All of the houses in the area sit well off the street behind a stand of trees so it isn't intruding upon anyone's personal space. You are very correct, his recent behavior indicates the officer's lame response has emboldened him. If I had it to do over again I would ask for the officer's every assurance he was going to arrest the guy. If not, then I would ask him to just fill out a report and go away.

Yep, he gave it two or three really good whacks with his golf club . . . Scratched up the baked enamel finish pretty good . . . Played the video for the cops thinking it would be a slam-dunk. They called me a few days later and said they are not going to arrest him because there is a possibility I won't show up in court. Apparently they have found a loop-hole in the whole uphold-the-law thing. Yah right, I am going to spend dineros muchos on a video surviellance system, then not follow up when it catches some dummy vandalizing my property. So it is up to me to get a copy of their excellent report and file charges myself. This is a heads-up for all y'all cammers . . . Just because you may catch someone on video doing something really stupid, it doesn't necessarily mean the cops are going do anything . . . But, I am totally sold on having a decent video surveillance set-up for your residence. I wouldn't be without one.

Too funny . . . web video My neighbor likes to drive golf balls around the neighborhood. But he apparently doesn't like to be video'd driving golf balls around the neighborhood. He isn't too bright. I'm putting a second camera out in the front yard just to yank his chain . . . Hats off to the Piczel bullet cam . . . took a lickin' and kept tickin'

ya' just gotta luv those Taiwanese teenagers . . . they try so hard . . . From a Swann S243-8nu.

Ordered a Swann 8nu DVR & a big Western Digital HDD to put in it . . . The DVR arrived before the HDD, so I pulled the HDD out of an old Clover cdr4070 and put it in the Swann DVR . . . Used the Swann with the old Clover HDD for a few days until the new HDD arrived . . . After installing the new Western Digital HDD noticed that the Swann now has a much better frame rate on playback than the old Clover HDD . . So if you are picking up a hard drive to put in your DVR, I think it would be a good idea to get a good quality HDD . . . I have always had good luck with Western Digital hard drives. Didn't notice what brand the old Clover HDD was, but it was likely some no-name POS.

Just got two Speco CVC-130R B&W bullet cameras that are supposed to be good down to .02 Lux. As soon as they are pointed at anything dark a large contrast bar appears in the middle 15% of the screen and obscures everything behind it. Both cams do this. And the picture itself just gets progressively fuzzier as the ambient light dims. I've had a Clover OB220 for few weeks. Like this camera alot. Very, very crisp picture. Things in the image have an infrared glow. Very cool looking. It just seems to me that the Clover is just as sensitive in low lite conditions, but with a much crisper picture and without the contrast bar distortion. If the Clover is a .1 Lux camera and the Speco is a .02 Lux camera, shouldn't the low light sensitivity be about five times better?? If the Speco has 420 tv lines and the Clover has 380, shouldn't the Speco cam have a crisper image?? I think the Speco's are going back & I'm getting a few more of the Clover's. They are even about $20 cheaper . . .

try this: (link deleted) oh, but I haven't opened it up to the Internet yet . . . still working out dvr operation & camera locations & installations . . .

Just got a Swann DVR 8 Net: http://www.swann.com.au/show_item.php?item=241 Seems ok. The physical chassis seems to be designed and constructed well with good materials. Doesn't look and feel cheap. Does anyone know how to playback over the net? Can get connected and view live video, but can't get playback to work. Just figured it out. But you can't fast forward playback over the net. You can't search by date & time. This makes the network functionality pretty much worthless. Of course the manual is written by someone that does not speak english as a primary language, but it is mostly comprehensible. It seems to use disk space efficiently. Three cameras set to very high resolution (30 fps at 720 px) only ate up about 14 gb of disk space in about 6 hours. Instructions for setting up motion sensing were unclear. And motion sensing was unreliable. Motion sensing did not trip on a person walking the entire length of the screen, ultimately coming within about fifteen feet of the camera. Motion sensing set on its most sensitive setting. Motion sensing always seemed to kick in a few seconds late. Playback controls are *very* clunky. It only has a 2X, 4X, 8X & 16X fast-forward speeds. But you can navigate to the main system record menu and set a playback speed multiplier from 1 fps to 120 fps in about ten increments. This setting serves as a multiplier for the fast-forward speeds. So you can set the playback speed multiplier up to 60 or 120 fps and review several hours in a few minutes. But if you want to slow things down to see individual events, you have to go back to the main menu & set the playback speed multiplier back down to 12, 20 or 30 fps. Swann features it as a triplex dvr which means you can playback & record at the same time. You can playback and record at the same time, but the only way I could find to get out of playback mode is to push the stop button . . . which stops playback *and* recording also. So what is the point of a triplex dvr if you can't get out of playback without stopping recording ????? Also, you can't adjust the playback speed multiplier while the system is recording. You can't set individual cameras to record in color or B&W. Got the network features running with a minimum of fuss. The dvr will not ping, so just open the software and attempt to connect. The network software is the standard Taiwanese clunky POS. As mentioned above can't figure out how to playback over the net. Would make exporting movies and stills more convenient. It will export stills & movies out to a thumb drive. Then you have to use their clunky client software to convert these files into standard formats. Still image export doesn't work, it exports files that are mostly pixelated noise. So you have to export a movie and capture stills from the client software. Stills don't export with date-time labels or camera name labels. It only took a few moments to export an eight minute movie, then another few moments to load it up into the client software. The exported movie was only 65 mb. After setting it up I accidently hit some key combination that made it do a factory reset. Arggghhh. I think it was hitting the shift key about five times in a row. Why are all of these consumer security dvr companies completely incapable of putting together a decent, usable security dvr??? ehh, after messing around with it and learning its idiosyncrasies, I guess it isn't that bad. Would like to get a Speco dvr, but a comparable Speco product would be twice as much money. I guess a Swann 8 channel net enabled dvr is ok for $600 . . .

I made the mistake of buying a Clover cdr-4070, 4 channels with web access. The on-screen interface is very clunky. The dvr has a Compact Flash card slot. It takes 30 minutes to save about 5 minutes of video to their propietary file format. Then it takes another hour to export that 5 minutes out to a standard format like avi. After a week the dvr just stopped exporting video to the flash card. Still images are exported from the video files exported to the CF card. You can't save still images straight from the dvr. I wound up taking pictures of my TV screen instead of going through the extremely painful export process (that quit after a week anyway). Web access requires software on the client computer. The software is unusable. All of the play control functions don't really work. The interface is even clunkier than the on-screen interface. Think of a couple Taiwanese teenagers and I think you'd have a good picture of Clover's software development team. Clover's web site has been down for over a month. Do not waste your time with this POS. Thankfully SamsClub has a very liberal return policy.