Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is a great video surveillance system for home or small business. I think video surveillance is cheap insurance against vandalism and theft -- would-be vandals/robbers think twice when they know they're being recorded. This system comes with everything you need to set it up, is easy to setup, has good features and video quality, and lots of storage.
PROs:
- 4 night-vision cameras that do a good job (not great, but good)
- Includes everything in the box (DVR, 4 cameras, 4 60-foot cables, mouse, remote control, IR extender for remote, power supplies)
- Easy to install and setup
- Cameras can mount to ceiling, wall, or horizontal surface
- Cameras hold up well and are weather proof
- Includes remote control with IR extender
- Simple menus with good navigation
- Can specify recording quality details (frames per second, video compression quality, resolution, brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation)
- 500 GB hard drive and recording options to recycle the oldest videos as needed (FIFO method)
- Motion detection with ability to specify where to detect motion by turning on and off boxes on a grid overlay of the image, and sensitivity adjustment
CONs:
- Mouse has a bright blue glowing scroll wheel that you can't miss when you enter a room -- burglars will have no trouble finding the DVR!
- Mounting base for cameras is made of plastic
- Video output defaults to 1280x1024, so you need a monitor that can support this during setup (then you can change it to lower or higher if you'd like)
- Poor video playback controls
INSTALLING:
Installing the system is relatively easy. There are just a few connections that need to be made. The cameras all must use the 60-foot extension cables. The cables include female BNC connectors on both ends, and power connectors. The extension cable, which carries both power and video, is only 5/32" thick. However, the BNC connectors on each end measure 5/8" diameter, so you will need a 3/4" holes to pass the cable through. The video cable seems to be somewhat low quality, which probably reduces the video quality. I couldn't test the cameras connected directly to the DVR because both the cameras and DVR have male BNC connectors, so the extension cable is needed to reverse gender. The cameras include about 3 feet of cable, so you can tuck the connectors indoors if you mount the cameras outdoors. One of my runs exceeded 60 feet, so I purchased a separate extension cable (SECURITY LABS SLA31 50-ft BNC Video Power Extension Cable). If you order an extension cable, make sure it comes with a male-to-male BNC connector, so you can connect it to your 60-foot cable (unless you replace the initial 60 foot cable). I found the extension I ordered to be better quality than the cables that came with the system.
The system includes two power blocks -- one for the DVR and one for the four cameras. The power block for the 4 cameras comes with a 4-way split Y cable so you can provide power to each camera.
The cameras have two mounting screw threads on the back (one on top, one on bottom), so you can choose to mount the camera to a ceiling, wall, or surface. The base is made of plastic, but seems to be sufficiently strong. Be careful when driving screws to mount the base -- you could probably crack it easily with too much pressure. There's a thumb screw on a swivel head that connects the camera to the mount. A few folks reported that the cameras don't stay steady on the screw, so I put a drop of LocTite on the thread before mounting it up. All of my 4 cameras seem steady.
The DVR has connectors on the back for power, video (standard VGA connector), USB mouse, 10/100 Ethernet port, an "alarm input" port (for use with external motion sensors, etc.), and a connector for the included IR extender cable (for the remote control).
IMPORTANT: While the DVR supports several monitor resolutions, it defaults to 1280x1024 resolution. So, you will need a monitor that supports that resolution when first setting up the system. This was a problem for me, since the monitor I am using is a 1024x768 LCD monitor that does not support higher resolutions. So, I couldn't get any video and couldn't adjust the resolution. Fortunately, I have a higher resolution monitor on a computer that I was able to temporarily use. Once I had it hooked up to a higher-resolution monitor, I was then able to change the resolution to 1024x768. This was POOR configuration on their Lorex's part -- they should have either provided a boot menu option or defaulted to the lowest resolution. Lorex did not mention this at all in any of their documentation -- it just says "VGA", which describes the connection, not the resolution.
SETUP:
The menus are relatively easy to understand and navigate, but you will need to keep the owner's manual next to you for reference until you become familiar with their menus and conventions. For example, "O" means "On" and "X" means "Off", whereas the rest of the world uses "1" and "0" (even my car uses 1 and 0). I do like that all of the menus have a drill-down navigation method. The right-mouse button is the "Back" functionality. So, as you click into menus, you right-click to go back a level.
The DVR defaults to recording at a high frame rate (I think 15 or 30 frames per second) and lower resolution video (640x320 I think). Since detail in the video is important to me, but I don't need it to be theater-like smooth motion, I changed all of the camera settings to 5 frames per second, at the highest compression quality, and 640x480 resolution. That still gives me reasonable motion without sacrificing storage capacity. I think it estimated that it could hold 18 days of video with these settings.
VALUABLE TIP: The system features motion detection (it can be configured to record only when it detects motion). Motion detection works by comparing one video frame to the prior frame and determining how much the image has changed. This was a key feature for me, since I don't want to watch hours of still video -- just show me the highlights! However, the cameras seemed to be EXTREMELY sensitive to motion at night and not so much during the day. So, if the motion sensitivity was appropriately set for daytime, it was always recording at night because it always detected motion (video grain from low lighting would trigger the motion detection). I have recently discovered that if you reduce the contrast and increase the brightness, then the video sensitivity works properly at night. I have all of my cameras set to about 50% on brightness and about 30% on contrast (before, I had the inverse settings).
VIDEO: The cameras produce 640x480 video resolution. The video quality, however, resembles that of a high-end VCR; it's not a crisp 640x480. The cameras have 59 degree horizontal and 44 degree vertical viewing angles. These wide angles cover a lot of territory, but won't give you detail unless someone is fairly close to the camera. The cameras have two operating modes: day and night. In day mode, they are full-color. They switch to night mode by measuring light on a photo sensor. There's a mechanical "clack" sound when it switches modes. At night, the camera is in black-and-white mode, but can view in near darkness. It also has a bunch of infrared LED's that will illuminate for up to about 20 feet away (I think they claim 40, but it's really only effective to 20). Note that if you have something in the foreground, it will flood out the image from the IR LED's shining bright on it. You will want to place the cameras where there's nothing directly in its foreground (tree branches, etc.).
PLAYBACK: This is where I found the product to lack in design (costing it a star in my review). It does a decent job of providing a list of video activity (most-recent activity is at the top of the list). As you scroll through the list, it shows you the first frame of the video. However, the list menu sits square in the middle of the screen, so you can't really see what's on that preview frame without clicking into it.
Once you click into a video, fast-forwarding and rewinding is pretty clumsy. It REALLY needs improvement in this area. It provides a timeline of activity at the bottom, but makes it difficult to understand and navigate. Navigation options are such that you can press fast-forward and it will move to 5X speed. Press it again and it goes to 15X and then 60X. However, at these faster speeds, it drops a lot of frames and shows only a few frames per second. It's not like pressing fast forward on a VCR or DVD player, where everything moves quickly. Instead, it jumps to different times quickly, but keeps that frame up for a fraction of second.
Another problem is that it often detect motion when someone has fully entered the frame. So, I told it to record for 3 seconds before motion detection (nice capability). But when you start playback, it starts at motion detection. So, you have to rewind. However, the rewind starts at 5X and blows right past the prior 3 seconds.
I wish they took advantage of the mouse scroll wheel to act as a video jog wheel -- that would make perfect sense. However, they didn't do that.
Overall, I think the system is great, but could use some software improvements.
Enjoy!
UPDATE ON 1/17/2011:
I found that I was constantly trying to adjust the motion sensitivity on the system to record only when there was motion on my property. What I found is that if I set the sensitivity too low and reduce the detection areas in the motion detection grid, I would often miss events (or wonder if I had missed it) because it simply didn't detect motion...Read more›
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Lorex LH314501C4 Edge Surveillance DVR with 4 Indoor/Outdoor Night Vision CamerasEdge Surveillance DVR with 4 Indoor/Outdoor Night Vision Cameras
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