cctv_down_under

Most PC based recorders wont go much past 640x480 resolution (PAL) there are speed and interlacing issues once you go past that and infact when most manufactorers mention speeds they are stating speeds @ 320x240 (PAL) only and when not using Hyperthreading CPU's and all cameras are recording at once you will find that 90% will be slower at the larger resolution. However there are some exceptions to that rule, for example the http://www.dallmeier-electronic.com/ actually capture at a large 720x576 resolution and are able to do this due to the Linux operating system. Standalone devices are more likely to capture full sized recordings as that is what they are designed to do. A standalone is a DVR that is not a PC and it is made just for that purpose, they lack a lot of features but some do have motion detection options that can be turned on or off at any time (99% of all PC ones do this as standard). Standalones are more stable and easy to move around. It is not the Camera that does your capturing it is the DVR card itself. Because a PC can crunch the video (compress) better than most standalone box's you should get better options for storage with a PC based system, also a PC mainboard will support larger drives later with a BIOS upgrade, but a Standalone box may not. I think most DVR products crop the images to avoid interlacing and storage issues, so if you find one that does a larger res please let us know on here.

I highly recommend Ganz or Sunkwang cameras they are excellent value for money. Can you email me the I.P. Adress and I will take a look at your web server?

I think they are manufactored by a company called Tai Labs, howver they must have changed their name or been bought out or something because I am sure I have seen them before in several places, but now I cant even find them in a search engine.

It would be impossible to achieve 50fps in anything larger than 320x240 resolution with only one connexant chip, unless hardware compression is built into the card and if it were it would be a lot more expensive than that card. Can you email me a screen shot of the software at all and if possible a photo of the card? These guys are Polish?

You would need to consider using fibre optic cable for runs of that length, not the cheapes option but at least it is free from any interference that may affect pixel movement. You need to purchase cameras witha good Signal to Noise Ratio so that you do not have similar problems. I would strongly recommend Ganz or Pelco for high quality cameras or if your budget will allow it Ikigami is about the best I have seen, anything that is Japanese is pretty good. As for the recording options, they are many, Geovision is the best PC based DVR I have seen and there have been a few raps for the Kalatel standalone DVR on this forum, however I am yet to test it. If you want great features then Geovisoon is the option you need, howver if you want really good quality images you can not go past the Dallmeier units as they are not only Linux but give THE best images I have seen. I would suggest you have a look at several products and then post on here and we will be able to help you with decisions. Hope this helped,

Any chance of emailing me a screen shot of the software?

I have never tried that combination, however I have seen the SIS chip work like I mentioned to you. Please let me know as it is always valuable to know what suits?

What frame rate are the non real time ones?

Ok now I am completely confused, I checked out DVR Systems and had a look at the H series card and it seems fairly similar to all the other cards on the market and strikes a strong resemblance to the Avermedia product. However I clicked this link http://www.dvrsystems.net/hseries.htm It was called Stackable H series cards, the cards are much different, they have I/O built in and converter of protocol for PTZ as well as TV Output and the software is different again. This one seemed quite good and those of you that have H - Series cards, could you please tell me which one you have. Huperlabs seems very similar but the software looks slightly different however when compared to the link above it is vastly different, the problem seems to be thet there must be two versions of H-Series DVR units. As for how many times a day I get contacted by so called Manufactorers, it is a joke. I once imported a product from someone that had similar specs to the product we stock and found it was the same product re-badged (illegally). The truth from what I can gather is that there is only a very few manufactorers of these boards and they are all in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Most of the big companies like Geovision, do not even manafacture the cards themselves. However they do enough volume for the manufactoirer to justify modifications to the cards to suit thier purposes. I assume their must be some manufacturing done in USA but I have yet to come accross it as we mostly deal with the Asian Pacific region. Hope this helped,

That is a very true statement, the problem is that the consumer is not yet aware of the quality of certain brands yet. This means that the consumer does not necessarily know that your service or product is better and this is happening more often, but yes once again, if you do a good job and it does not break then you will get a good reference. Hope this helped,

VSS looks like a good site to me, I cant imagine anyone could afford to actually stock that large a range, however if they can get it in it all seems like high quality gear or least Mid to High range. There are some brands sold there that are sold all around the world and they are good reliable brands. I hope this helped.

I personally would stay well clear of E-Bay and the other cheaper places, the best bet you can do is ask where their gear is manufactured, if it is made in Taiwan or China, do not touch it with a barge pole. If it is made in Korea or even better Japan, there is a good chance it will be high quality gear. The best advice I can give you is this: Most manufactorers, Sanyo, Ganz, Sony etc will have a list of prefered dealers/installers, I would ask them who they recommend for your area, they wont recommend anyone who is rubbish and this way you will be guarenteed service from a proffesional that knows their gear well. I will take a look at those links as posted here if anything looks pretty good I will post again. Hope this helped,

Please email me the prices as well.

I too sell Geo, please tell me why it is better I am very interested.

I just had a look at huperlabs but that is not the same card as the H series and the software is different too.. I think you might be mistaken, but I am known for being wrong

Wow thanks for the heads up there, I looked at the advertisement and I must say I was impresseed, I have seen a few cards with 232 converters built in and audio,but not many with TV ouput, it seemed like a pretty good card and if it were cheaper than Geo I would have been keen to try one. Who manufactures them? I think a lot of people do not like Geovisions marketing strategy and that is why people are carrying other options now, but not trying to be biased, I have not seen better software than Geo yet and if anyone knows of any better, I would be very keen to test it. I am starting to notice that a lot of manufactorers will re-badge their gear under other names and I strongly believe there are not many manufactorers at all and that some state they are but indeed are not and they only develop the software, I think that I might test Avermedia again as this one looks very similar to that in GUI. Once again, thanks for the heads up and have you had any probs with the Geo gear?

What is the link for the DigiNet cards? If you read my other posts you will see that I have tested DiViS from Chance -I but have not found it as good as Geo, however it is very good and cheaper.

To be honest, most manufactorers of DVR cards actually dont support drivers for ME anymore. I would assume that if you were talking about DVR cards then you may have used the wrong drivers. XP is designed to run on at least 256mb of ram so that would be your bottleneck, and yes if your not talking DVR then of course it will run faster on a lower spec PC, thats because ME was designed for lower spec PC's. ME has so many bugs it is incredible and some very severe compatability issues, if indeed you are coding and multitasking I am surprised to hear that ME would out perform XP Pro. However XP was never designed to be run on a machine of that spec so If you are talking about other applications then I understand what you mean. As for capture ratings, I have tested all O/S systems and have found very slow capture ratings with 98/ME, they actually drop frames, even on high end machines. 2000 is the fastest in the way of ability to set CPU tasking usage, and as mentioned many times before, there are many ways to set up XP to get rid of what I like to call the "Bloatware" that Microsoft put in there, as far as multimedia went ME was the forefront of the technology at the time but I dont see many people still using it, In fact when Bill Gates Released it (I think it was going to be called whisper or something), he did a demonstration and it crashed on him, kind of ironic really. The problem you may be having is that XP requires at least 1.5Gb of FREE space and with only a 2Gb drive you would not have that! Also XP if left to its own devices will indeed hog the memory, but this can be adjusted, to be honest there really has only been three O/S that Microsoft has released recently 98, NT and XP. Windows 2000 was just made to fix security problems in NT and ME was a rebundled 98 because they could not release what they wanted in time and it was a bit of a gap filler. I am not a huge fan of any Windows O/S however I would have to say that XP Pro is the best if you have the hardware that it recommends, I apoligise if I miss understood you before I thought you were talking about capture rates. Hope this has helped.

I would still check with Geo to make sure your mainboard is ok to use, however most will work with 250 and 600 series, there are always exceptions but not many! Make sure to keep the chips cool though if your going to use an athlon

When I looked at them they were pretty reasonable, yhey come very retail packaged with good instructions. I think Aver are behind a lot of re-badged systems howver I am not sure, the Sentry one looks very similar. When we tested it the performance was good but the software was not as good as the Geovision range, however they have just informed us that they have released new software, so we are currently ordering some more samples, will let you know.

I must admit that it was very easy to install and worked a treat. I still think that Geovision is a lot better, however its not bad. Shame though that it does not do audio (well not that I could see). Was not sure if you can view multiple sites or not at one time and it would be handy to not have to have software to do it. Geovision uses a web interface and therefore you have no need for software, however it does use software as well if you wish too. Overall it was a pretty fluent program from what I can see.

You will be fine with Via as long as the card does not have a hint bridge, the Gv250 and the Gv600 do not have Hint Bridges, however all the other models do!

The other is the case here... Standalones here are dirt cheap and PCI cards are considered expensive.

This is why i want to make a consumers guide, so much garb out there, how would the consumer know the difference.. you truley get what you pay for in CCTV.

I hold the same quals, not that paper quals mean anything at all, you are both right, less exploits with ME and it can be shelled very nicely, but it is not faster than XP not buy a long shot! 2000 is actually the fastest and 2000 server the most secure, that I have used anyhow. In my opinion ME was the worst OS ever written, but at least it doesnt get attacked every day! Depends on the file system that you are using.. some DVr cards run OK on 98/ME but most will actually capture slower on those two OS.