MetzLyov

eyecu, costs of any DVR is still higher than Time Lapse VCRs. You can get excellent quality VCR from Mitsubishi for under $200. Here is the URL for your consideration: http://mitsubishi-imaging.com/security/?Cat=recorders&subcatid=6&p=specs&productid=26 If need help, please PM... Levon

Hey guys... Anyone taking any vacations? Finally I am able to take a week off starting this Wednesday and going to East Coast... FLORIDA of all places... Daytona Beach and staying with banch of friends and families... I have a whole week of activities already arranged from fishing, sailing and god knows what else and I am sure a lot of drinking... Hopfully I will not be facing another Hurricane or what media likes to call Tropical Depression Anyway, see ya later... Levon

Herm, Exactly my thoughts... Levon

Mike, I will suggest Mini-Dome cameras with hi res color cameras and varifocal lenses. I know that you can save at least 1/3 of the cost number that you may have budgeted with such hardware. Besides, with 3 years warranty, you can never go wrong... We have done several bowling centers and they worked out great. Did you know that if you have the proper coverage in your location covering every isle, the cash area and the game areas, your insurance rates will drop at least 25%?? The gotcha is that you should have a solid equipment and covering every corner of this business... Last few jobs we did, we installed 14 Mini-Domes inside of the building and 2 outdoor cameras to protect their parking areas... From liability stand point, you also are responsible for any problems that occur within your property, therefore insurance companies are very much interested to have such coverage. I have seen in one instant that an insurance company actuall paid 50% of the overall costs of the project, therefore explore that opportunity... Hope this helps. Levon

I concur... This new series actually are better and they deliver the goods as stated. I think Sanyo as a whole is becoming more and more competitive on pricing (even dropped their hot seller color hi res cameras at 520TVL lowest we ever seen) and made their DVRs even more accessible to general users... From what I can see, they are coming out very strong with newer management and very agressive on pricing. That should help them to capture more business and more customers. I never had any issues with any of their products and I think their tech support is very well organized and helpful... Data, how did your install go?? Levon

Hey guys, how did we shift talking about vacations to foods As for foods, well I really do not care for French foods as their unjust attitude reflects it all.... I can never understand any ethnic group's attitude tawards anyone else and specially French... I am not very picky on any types of foods, hell I have been in Asia and even snakes dishes taste better than any French food.... I lived in France for a year and I can tell you first hand that they have some nice people, but majority are, well very impressional and self confident and I always wondered why? Is it the language which came from Latin, is it their short lived and borring history, is it their overpriced and cheap wine, is it their socialist government structure??? Or am I missing anything? I could not belive that Chirac actually made any comments about English foods and this is before he was invited to have a dinner with the Queen?? If his attitude shows anything being the head of this country, it does confirm their unjust and stupid attitude tawards anyone... Levon

Hey Coop, hope you guys are doing well... I have not been in UK in the last 6 years... I have a business trip coming up to Europe November time line (excluding France - they all hate us, Americans)... for 6 weeks to cover not only Europe, but I have to visit Romania, Chek Republic, Bulgaria, Hungry, Russian territory, etc... I will look you up when I arrive to UK.... Levon

Pano 484 is an overkill and will not give you more, rather this camera is to be used for outdoor applications. Use Ganz minidomes - they are great and provide very shart and crisp pictures for indoor applications. Here is one that we use more than any other dome - it is Ganz ZC-6039NHA series and it comes with various mounting hardware. It comes with hi res 480TVL camera and varifocal lens. Here is the spec sheet: http://www.cbcamerica.com/cctvprod/ganz/cams/domeCams/DomePDF/zcd6000_cut.pdf Pricing is excellent and with 3 years warranty, you can not go wrong... Levon

Hey guys... I am back... finally! Great times in Daytona - basically nothing to do except the beach, the food, a lot of sleeping and many girls... Levon

Data, this was suppose to be business trip. Then it got cancelled. Well I had the tickets and I decided might as well take the family with me. Just got the call from this manufacturer located in Florida and they now want the meeting and I told them, well... no can do! La Jolla is great place to be and San Diego as a whole is a perfect place to take a vacation. I had tickets already booked a month in advanced and thought I can turn it into some sort of fun... Have many friends in Florida, so to have fun, I am never shorted on opportunities... CCTV_Australia, look me up when you are in So. Cal... Levon

Rory, just kidding man... Boca, Deerfield Beach or even Miami sounds great. Heck, I am there in few days for a whole week... Anyone wants to hook up?? Drinks are on me! Levon

and a lot of girls?? Count me in... When do we do this?? Levon

If you specialize in high end equipment, the demand for such knowledge and expertise does not come cheap, which will work to your benefit. With your aggressive approach and willingness to learn and gaining knowledge, chances are you will be the company to compete in Bahamas and as long as you keep pushing it, I am sure you will make it... Remember, you rather specialize in something rather than being jack of all trades and master of none...

No girls? Well you can count me out As for the forum to get together, I am a game... Any place and any time! May be I can turn that get together to another vacation opportunity! If you are going to be in our neck of the woods, Los Angeles that is, let me know...

And those customer will make you money and not the ones who squeeze you to the point that it makes no sense to even do business.... That is why we do not sell low end of anything, rather all major brands... Levon

Application and someone's ability to pay the top dollar.... Levon

Rory, we already have an account with them and we are buying majority of their products... I just do not care for them as much, because I could not justify cost vs. performance for my customers... The only people that buy them from us are from military, military contractors and from certain governmental agencies, but majority of times, very few customers actually are willing to go for it... On the other hand, I know I sell quite of few Pano CL-924 model with a good 1/2" lens and it works very well... I wish I can post some pictures, but for legal reasons, we can not... Overall performance is similar, but I think Extreme's high end equipement does have an edge... and it shows! Levon

Hope you were not using Maxtor hard drives - for at least 2 years we had very serious problems with this brand for their ATA and SATA drives. No matter what we did, it was failing out of box or within 30 days. There were some very serious problems with them and even the manufacturer admitted.... After switching to Western Digital and to Seagate, no more problems... In some cases you can use SATA, but again who is the manufacturer of your DVR???... Mostly it will be dependent on DVR's requirements or if it will support SATA... Levon

Rory, Excellent pictures.... I guess when they say a picture is worth 1,000 words, this is a proof... Good job man... I am impressed.. I guess we will start looking at Extreme products afterall... and I thought Pano was the "king" of the hill Levon

Your reasoning is correct and that is why I did not mention DVMRe-Pro .. 4 channel 120pps. But the Digia is a great box, as long as you do not intend to extract video remotely. I think GE purposely disabled this feature in Digia, which is avail on DVMRe series and with their latest 16 channel boxes... Levon

GE makes an excellent box with MPEG4 compression for 4 channel and with total 120FPS total (30FPS per channel)... Here is the specs: http://www.ge-consultantlink.com/Docs/digia_prd.pdf This box is probably the most cost effective in the market as a stand alone unit.. Only 1 major draw back - you can not playback video remotely, rather you can view real time as it happens... The playback or extraction of the video must be done with the box at its location. Levon

Rory, do you know if one of the cameras tested may have been Panasonic CL-924?? I take that this camera from ExtremeCCTV does deliver the goods, but at what price tag? This Panasonic cameras is not cheap, but from what my research shows, it is still more cost effective... Just curious... Levon

Rory, very cool pictures and excellent video... Have you tried Panasonc CL-924 series for similar application? I know what you will say about Panasonic, but lets keep those "feeling" aside for a moment.... We have used Panasonic CL-924 in a similar applications. The most recent job that was done was in Vegas construction site. These cameras were installed to cover every entrance and exit in and out of the site. Lighing conditions were very bad at night and in some areas were pitch dark. With these cameras, we were are able to get similar results and actually were able to catch several contractors that were taking tools and materials in the middle of the night. The video pictures not only identified the vehicles used and their license plates, but actually who those people were... On a different construction site, some contractors actually torch the place. When the investigations started, most of the hardware was damaged including the cameras, the cables and all the fiber and wireless equipment. GE DVR was actually so dirty from the smoke and debrees that we thought nothing can be retreived... Well, not only we were able to recover all the video, but also before these cameras were smoked, DVR captured extremely good video in a pitch dark environment showing several vehicles and their license plates and also who those criminals were... face details, clothing, etc.. In both cases, these cameras are placed an average of 1,000' to 5,000' apart from all the entry and exit locations.. For the lenses, we use hi powered Tokina lenses... Results were exceptional and I wonder if the camera pricing for ExtremeCCTV Reg-L series are more expensive or less expensive compared to Panasonic CL-924 series...?? Levon

Hey guys, if I can put my 2 cents.... Rory, a good approach on adjusting the camera before installing - didn't we all know this?? Is the picture quality the same during the night as during the day?? The real question that I have if this camera's picture quality is better during the day and it fades during the night - these pictures were taken at night, so we can not make the assumption automatically that the lens is not focused correctly. I will not push adjusting the back focus yet, rather concentrate on the type of lens being used. I have seen this type of problems and yes, by playing around with the focus, sometimes it works and you should do everything possible to focus the cameras at its best... However, if proper focusing does not correct the problem, then it is possible that this application needs Aspherical and IR corrective varifocal lens that adjusts IR and the lighting conditions automatically and this will become obvious at night... Sometimes spending few dollars more for a better lens does save tremendous amount of labor time and resources... Levon

Bob, I agree... I see many people buying CD or DVD burner along with DVRs and wasting money and then DVRs with higher hard drvie capacities and they usually pay double on the hard drive costs that is included on DVRs... In some reports that I read, they markup hard drives 100% when selling them along with DVRs. There is no rime or reason to pay for such costs, when you can have a cheapo computer next to it or available remotely that you can add as much hard drives as you want without any restrictions and then transfter all the video you want. Levon