cctv_down_under

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.

I can get em even cheaper but who would, you need a proper array if they are to work for more than 10 Mtrs and then they are so obvious, I am with Rory all the way Extreme make the best ones I have seen, however you can buy very lowlight cameras and cheap yard lights that would be much cheaper and less obvious.

Ganz are about o release a day/night version of the dome

Geovision will work fine on an Athlon CPU the only thing you need to worry about is making sure that it has a SIS chipset, the problem is that most are NFORCE or VIA and these do not work with Geo, also there are heat issues with Athlons, if you use good ventilation I can tell you that it will work fine, I have done many Athlons, but I would always prefer the cooler P4 or Celeron machine. Besides that the P4 actually performs better.

The reason that Geo say the 250 and 600 work only is because these cards use one chip only and therefore do not require the hint bridge chip which has compatability issues with VIA chipsets.

Remember when there were no compatabililty issues a few years back, that is because we only had 25FPS machines which require 1 chip only and therefore no Hint Bridge.

I think DVS is DiViS and I have tried their cards, they are not as good as Geovision, I have not tried many others, Geo arent cheap but they are crammed full of features. If you send me the link I will look closely at it for you.

As Rory has mentioned above, Extreme CCTV make some amazingly robust cameras, where are you located I am in Australia, it says you are from the land of Oz, does that mean Australia?

As for Extreme's range, they are great but not cheap, it would be more cost effective to just mount the camera in an environmental housing, you can mount them in a heated one if you are concerned about the snow, hell you can even get them with wipers on the front and they arent all that expensive either, If you use the right housing then you can have any camera in there you like.

Snow = Glare therefore a bullet camera wont cut it for you (No Auto Iris), In all seriousness, the word quality and robust does not go with the word cheap! Simply put: if you want it to last dont buy cheap gear, there are a lot of products claiming low light but most high res chips in Colour cant handle it unless you pay the money for a DSP Digital Wide Dynamic Camera (which mind you I would strongly suggest) I sell these for around $650 Australian and if you go for a varifocal lens then it wont matter too much where you put the camera.

One thing to note will be your white balance settings, if you have snow then there will be a lot of light reflection and a lot of scene whiting, you may get away with a Day/Night camera but If you can afford it go for a Wide Dynamic Cam.

I know I will draw some flack for this comment but: IR does not really work, unless you pay big bucks, it is hardly justified and will only work for B/W and small areas, you would be better off with the Day Night cam.

PC based systems are by far the best for networked operations and allow for easy upgrades and I highly recommend them, however if you cant use computers much or want more stability a standalone device will serve you well.

IP67 rated cameras can be hosed down without need of a housing and you can get some from Ganz that have low temperature ratings and Varifocal Built in Lenses.

You should be looking at around $550-$600AUS for a Day/ night option, fully kitted with lens and heated Housing and around $850-$900 for a Japanese wide Dynamic with the same options.

The best suggestion I can make is only buy Korean or Japanese, stick to sony chips and only use PCI cards if you know computers.

Geovision makes the best of the PCI cards that I have seen.

Hope this helped.