DavidR

Yup. You get what you pay for. Two other alternatives to consider, since you don't have a final design of the system in mind yet. 1. You might use network cameras--Axis, Panasonic, etc. If you have network cables in the house, you can use those. If no, then you'll be wiring the house for network as well as cameras. Double-duty...Downside is network cameras cost more. Upside, in addition to "free" network cabling, is its easy to re-configure. 2. Might even consider wireless network cameras. VEO makes a good, inexpensive wireless network camera. http://www.veo.com/Observer-Wireless/default.asp Move 'em as you wish. No need to run cabling. Use the wireless security, though, so you don't wind up making your cameras public. Keeping 1 or 2 wireless cameras in the mix allows to cover "special events" like outdoor parties, pool in summer, etc. If you want to see your cameras from your cell phone, while you're away from home, consider using SkyWire Video as your "DVR".

I'm not sure I understand the question, but isn't there a low-cost, low-tech solution? Just put coax T-connections on the input to the multiplexer, and run a 2nd set of cables to the modulation equipment? I've used T-connected to split the feeds from cameras in the past, with good results. Just keep the cable length downstream from the T as short as possible. I don't see any loss of quality doig it that way.

We have some customers using both no-ip and DYNDNS. They have reported no problems...

SkyWire Video can support integration with access control systems through its serial port support and scripting. e-mail me if you want more info.

Our SkyWire Video product just began supporting the IQEye cameras. We don't have any commercial installations with them yet, but we do with Panasonic and Axis and Mobotix IP Network cameras. SkyWire Video adds DVR functions to Network cameras (motion detection, recording, playback, alerts) and sends MPEG-4 video to PocketPC and PC devices, and supports video to cell phones. More info here. http://www.astaskywire.com/products/SkyWireVideo/SkyWireVideoServer.asp[/url]

Sounds like SkyWire Video would do it all for you, as well. http://www.astaskywire.com/products/SkyWireVideo/SkyWireVideoServer.asp One additional feature that may be useful--the systems at each store can send their video (at a reduced frame rate) to the central office, which can record there, as well. So you are recording locally in the store at full frame rate, and also sending video over the DSL/ISDN to the home office at reduced frame rate. Gives you redundant recording. Can also view live video from cell phone or PDA, if that is of interest to management.

I like the low-tech solution of an external USB drive. With multiple drives in your PC, a problem that kills one of the drive might kill them all--power surge, lightening strike, phyical damage (or theft) of the PC, etc. If you backup 2 gig daily, that should take only 5-10min on an external USB 2.0 drive, which is then moved to a different location. Problem is, even if you automate the proces with a macro, you still need to physically attach and remove the drive. How about networked backup, where a macro backs up the day's recordings to another PC on the network? With 100mbit Ethernet, it won't take "too" long. But your network will be very slow while the backup is taking place.

We are considering taking SkyWire Video to LINUX. Take a look. If you are interested, contact me. Provideo is probably the first board we would support on Linux. http://www.astaskywire.com/products/SkyWireVideo/SkyWireVideoServer.asp

Or you could become a mercenary, set up your own system, and sell the video to injured parties, insurance companies, etc.as evidence Check legality, but if its a public area you should have the right to have a camera covering it.

Joebo explained it very well. Any system will give you control over your bandwidth usage, either with a single bandwidth control, or with controls like image size, frame rate, etc. So you can use as much or as little bandwidth as you need. You just trade off fps and/or image quality for bandwidth. MPEG-4 will get you much smaller image size (because it onyl sends changed, and rarely sends complete images), hence more FPS pre given bandwidth. Other compression mechanisms do the same thing different ways--they give you more quality or more fps in less bandwidth than uncompressed images.

Thanks for the referral, folks.

Here's a guess: -The video capture card (which converts the analog camera signal to digital) -The bus where the various video cards reside. -The storage system (aka hard drive) -Other inputs and outputs, including keyboard and monitor -The Motherboard, which links the Bus, the storage system/HD, the IO ports (keyboard and monitor) with the CPU.

Fred, most implementations of MPEG-4 allow you to trade off image quality with bandwidth. Depends on the individual application, of course. Using ours as an example, you can have different quality.bandwidth settings for: -Recording -Remote access via PC client -Remote access via PocketPC clients So you could record at a very high quality, and transmit to PocketPC at a lower quality (since the PocketPC device cannot process very high resolutions images very fast anyway). That avoids having to use different protocols for recording and transmitting.

Wow, sounds like the Bahamas was a very safe to practice crime, until this incident.

Just to confuse you a little more... You can get an "all software" DVR that will run in the background on your PC, and still let you use your PC for other purposes--Solitaire, etc. Price is a little higher than the other options you have here, but if you factor in the cost of a new PC, maybe its not so bad. It will do motion detection with any camera (motion detection is video-based) also let you view your cameras remotely on PocketPC or cell phone (i.e. "nannycam") should you choose to do that in the future. Click on the link in my signature for more info.