Aver EH1008H Nano - One Guy's Review

I've been using the Aver Nano DVRs for about a year and I'd like to provide the forum with some feedback from someone who uses it on an almost every day basis. I'm not going through every feature, just some of my likes and dislikes. I hope this can be useful to anyone considering a purchase of this system.

Please keep in mind that these are solely my opinions based on my experiences with the Aver Nano EH1008H DVR. I'm not trying to talk anyone in or out of it. What may be important to me may not be important to you, and vice versa.

Likes:

- Hybrid. Can connect IP and analog cameras at the same time and Aver comes out with IP Camera updates very often. The list of supported IP cameras just keeps on growing.

- Fanless & very quite, although this can also be a negative as the hard drive can run very hot. Make sure it's in a cool, well ventilated area. I use a laptop chill pad to keep it cool. They work very well and can be powered by one of the front USB ports or a power adapter with a USB charger port. There looks to be space for an internal fan as well as a fan power connector, but I haven’t installed one yet. The chill pads work great.

- POS integration, however a separate data box is needed. I read where it supports some protocols without the data box, but after testing with Windows based point of sale systems I confirmed with the distributor and Aver that the data box is needed with the Nano.

- User Interface - pretty straightforward and simple enough to figure out without a manual. Connect a mouse to one of the front usb ports and navigation is pretty easy.

- Ability to set resolution and frame rate individually per camera @ CIF, HD1 or D1. Provides a max of 240fps @ CIF, 120fps @ HD1 and 60fps@ D1. As you set resolution and fps it tells you the fps you've used and what's available. I find this to be very helpful.

- Can record remotely from another Nano DVR via the Internet. I think this is a very interesting feature. If you have multiple locations you can use each DVR as a sort of off-site backup of a camera or two from other locations. It works well, as long as you have available bandwidth.

- Has a feature called Smart Recording which basically always records, but gives the ability to set frame rates for motion & no motion. For example, I might set 3fps when there's no motion and 7fps when motion is detected. I happen to think this is a great feature and I use it often. This can be set on a schedule on a per channel basis.

- Record scheduling. Can use a combination of always, motion, smart or no recording. I typically use smart recording during business hours and motion during non-business hours.

- Quality Setting (per channel). Basically, this adjusts compression - the higher the quality setting the lower the compression (creates larger files though). I'll use this occasionally depending on environment and what’s being recorded.

- Backing up large segments of video to a USB flash drive (or external hard drive) is quick & easy. Last week I needed to backup 4 hours of video from 5 channels (involved an unruly employee during a shift). Marked it off, hit backup and all was transferred to a flash drive. It also has an option to include the playback player along with the video - no need to look around for a CD or download the player from the Aver website.

- Playback & exporting to MPEG or AVI is very easy & straightforward. One feature I found that I haven't seen documented is when viewing 4 channels and exporting to MPEG or AVI, all 4 channels will be included in the MPEG or AVI file. So, when playing back the MPEG or AVI you'll see all 4 channels simultaneously. I found this by mistake as I thought each channel would be exported individually (you can export one channel at a time also). NOTE: This also works with 9 channel view, but each frame is so small it's hardly worth the effort. 4 channel works good though.

- Playback has a slider bar/button that allows you to scroll through video very quickly and there are little indicator bars showing where motion was detected. These little indicators appear whether motion detection is active or not. I find it comes in very handy when looking for an event and all I have is an approximate time. The indicators give a good indication when there's motion vs. no motion. It's not perfect, but comes in handy.

- User Accounts. Allows 32 users and provides many control rights to choose for each user. Can specify which cameras a user can view and also set a time limit on how long a user can stay connected or a date when the user account expires.

- Smartphone app is pretty good – basically the same for Android or iPhone (haven’t used the Blackberry app). The latest version allows playback (just one channel at a time though).

- Web Viewer. With the latest firmware, the Web Viewer was updated. I think it works much better now and has a sleeker look. Also, as with the smartphone app, it provides the ability to playback one channel at a time. It's no replacement for the Remote Console or CM3000 software, but provides a quick & easy solution for remote live viewing. I’ve had no problems in IE8 or IE9.

- Lastly, about the company itself, Aver comes out with firmware & IP camera updates quite often, they hold live webinars on the use of their products (I've attended a couple) and I've had great experiences when I contacted support a couple of times. The people I dealt with were very knowledgeable and helpful. They even created a beta firmware release for an issue I was having and kept the fix in later firmware releases.

Dislikes:

- My biggest dislike has to do with Remote Setup. Not all settings can be configured remotely - way too many options are grayed out. Of the 10 sections, 5 cannot be accessed remotely. Of the 5 that can be accessed, some features are grayed out. The big ones for me are:

Date & Time: I forgot to set daylight savings on some units, so I had to run around to each location to change the time (won't make that mistake again).

Masking: Motion Detection Masking has to be done on the DVR itself. I had a situation where a building across a parking lot had a motion sensor floodlight installed. At night, every time a branch moves the light turns on and the dvr starts recording. I would have liked to mask that area from the comfort of my home, but no. I had to go to the location at night and have someone walk over and trigger the floodlight so I could click on 4 boxes to mask it out.

Users: Cannot add, delete or change users remotely. This was almost a deal breaker for me. Anything to do with user accounts has to be done on the dvr itself. Thankfully changes to user accounts don't happen very often in my world, but when they do it's a real pain having to go on-site.

Rebooting: Cannot remotely reboot the DVR. A schedule can be set to reboot, but the schedule settings are grayed out too. I like to reboot the systems once in a while just a matter of protocol.

- Although it's very quick & easy to backup video to a flash drive from the DVR itself, backing up multiple channels using Remote Console can be a pain and Aver's Remote iBackup software seems very clunky, slow and downloads the playback software each time a segment is selected for download. For a location with DSL and 350k-500k upload it can be a long, boring process with an unnecessary software download.

- All of Aver's software applications are fixed window sizes. Can't resize windows or move them around and some applications remain on top of others. This can be very annoying when wanting to multitask on a PC. For live viewing it may be best to use the Web Viewer. NOTE: I’ve had other DVRs with the same “feature”, so it’s not something new or specific to Aver.

- Aver’s CM3000 & iMatrix software requires a screen resolution of 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1920x1200, 1440x900 or 1680x1050. My laptop has a native resolution of 1366x768 and I hate having to change it every time I want to use CM3000 or iMatrix. Remote Console will work at 1366x768 though.

- Cannot obtain a contiguous MPEG or AVI file if video goes past the hour. For example, if I want to save an event to MPEG or AVI from 10:55 to 11:05 I'll need two segments, 10:55-11:00 and 11:00-11:05. I can then join them using a third party program. This is somewhat annoying, but I can deal with it.

- Configuration of the DVR has to be done via the VGA port. If you don't have a VGA monitor, then a VGA to RCA converter will be needed.

- Spot monitor port (BNC) cannot display 4 or 9 camera view, but it can cycle through specified channels. In some environments having a static 4 channel view would be better, but I can live with the cycling.

Conclusion:

Regardless of my dislikes, for the price I think this is a feature rich DVR. I'm very happy with the video quality (which to me is more important than everything else) and the performance of these systems has been great over the past year. They are doing the job they were intended to do, but, if the ability to fully remote control the DVR is something that's critical to you, then you might want to look elsewhere for a surveillance solution. Otherwise they're nice little units with a lot of features and are competitively priced.

Excellent review.

I have some questions I hope someone can help me with:

- Mask

The mask setting in the nano only works with analog camera's, not with IP cams. IP cams can "Use IP Camera Motion" but I cannot get it to work work with a axis 207W. Motion fields etc. set u put but the DVR does not recognize a "Send HTTP notification" and "Send TCP notification" as motion trigger. Testing the connection says connection success. What could be the trick or is there a way to activate a mask for IP cams in the Nano.

- Resolution in H.264/MPEG4 : turnover point to MJPEG

The new firmware enables a higher resolution of 8MP total to be devided among 4 channels. That is higher than the manual says. The question is how high can one go and retain H.264 (or MPEG4) recording before having to go for MJPEG recording?

I have this DVR as well.

A major drawback is the lack of 16:9 aspect ratio support. The software only supports 4:3 so if you have a HD Megapixel camera hooked up you are only ever going to get a 4:3 image displayed.

Also their software as you mentioned is limited in screen resolutions. I find it also sluggish over local area network - it doesn't give very good frame rates especially with multiple HD cameras hooked up.

This reason alone is enough for me not to buy this (had I had a second chance).

Aver technical support is ok but they can be very slow and even though they may acknowledge bugs it may takes months for them to address them (or they may never).