List Price: $599.99
Sale Price: $533.97
Today's Bonus: 11% Off
I have purchased tons of stuff from amazon over the years, and this is the first time I have felt inclined to write a review, so bear with me. So, right up front, I tried hard to really like this thing. I have been wanting to get it for some time now, as I have two 1080 HD Dahua security cameras (for those that don't know, Q-See cameras and NVRs are just re-branded Dahua), which are great cameras for the most part, but that's a review for another product.
Let me first explain where I was before I got this NVR:
I have been using the FTP functionality on the cameras for about a year now, saving off the video footage to my PC. The problem was that it was REALLY bogging down my system with the constant writing to the secondary hard drive in my machine (the cameras don't have the best motion-sensing capabilities, so I had motion detection set so high that it was almost full-time record) at about 6000Kbps constant bit rate.
This is when I decided to save up for this thing and I was really excited when I got it. My friend (we are both engineers, by the way) had just ordered the 16-channel NVR and seemed to have mixed emotions after about a week's worth of using it. He has 5 Dahua cameras and we both did the FTP thing for the last year or so. I got the 8-channel, because I didn't think I would ever have more than 6 cameras or so.
Now that you know where I am coming from, let me summarize a few points on this thing:
The good:
1. Like any NVR, this thing is completely stand-alone and does a great job recording the video to the disk. It has TONS of options and you can tweak you camera settings from the NVR itself. As far as the recording goes, I couldn't be happier.
2. You can use the "Q-See QC View" iPhone and iPad apps to view the cameras, playback recorded video from the NVR, etc. (more on this later).
3. The model I purchased comes with a built-in 4-port PoE (Power over ethernet) switch, which is VERY handy if you don't already have a PoE switch for your cameras. This necessitates two power supplies (12V for the NVR itself, and 48V for the built-in PoE switch), which are both included, of course.
4. HDMI and RGB output. I have it hooked up to both my TV through HDMI (I am actually using a BriteView wireless HDMI transmitter in there, too and it still works great) and to a secondary computer monitor next to the NVR at the same time and that seems to work great as well, though I have not tried having them both on at the same time, but I don't think that it would make much of a difference.
5. The NVR finds the cameras really easily. If you have the cameras plugged directly into the NVR (using one of the four the PoE ports), it only takes as much time to find them as it takes the camera to boot up. Really easy.
The neutral:
1. A little fan noise. Not something to be TOO concerned with, but the NVR does have a built-in fan that can be a little annoying if you are sitting in the same room as the thing. It's not really loud, but just a little annoying unless you have the NVR tucked away in a server room of sorts, which is what I did.
2. The user interface was obviously designed by engineers (and, like I said, I AM one). It's not SUPER ugly (though they probably could have prettied it up some), it's just hard to navigate through. Like I mentioned above, there are TONS of options for this thing, and they decided to make all of these options available to you, which is good, but can be a little overwhelming.
3. This NVR may change settings on your cameras without warning you. Make sure you have your network settings set up EXACTLY how you want it before you plug your cameras into the PoE switch on the back of the NVR. I was using an external PoE switch at first and found the cameras easily with the NVR on the network. I had them configured with static IPs (192.168.x.x) for easy access. All of that changed when I moved them from my external PoE switch to the built-in switch on the NVR (which has a default gateway of 10.1.1.1). The switch on the NVR is completely separate from the rest of your network. In other words, I had my NVR's IP set to 192.168.0.200, for example. The switch is still in the 10.1.x.x space. So, when I moved my cameras, they were re-assigned a 10.1.x.x IP....and it was static. I couldn't access the cameras directly from my network anymore because they were now on a different network. Sure, I could probably change my subnet masks to be able to access them again, but it was just really annoying. Even after moving them back to my external PoE switch, they were still inaccessible. Just be aware of this.
The bad:
1. Try accessing this NVR from anything but IE and you're out of luck. IE? Really? C'mon, guys! I am even able to access most of the functionality on my Dahua cameras directly with the iPad, but not the NVR? C'mon. Also, you have to have the RIGHT VERSION of IE to be able to have it work smoothly, according to the different forums my buddy read. I am still running IE9, and am worried that if I upgrade to 10 that I might lose all functionality, just like with other browsers.
2. Invisible files? What the...? So, when I was saving off my video to my PC directly via FTP, it saves off the data into files that you can play back with some Dahua software, which was really nice, but has it's own drawbacks, of course. Anyway, Q-See claims that the NVR can save off these data files to your computer, and, when looking through the user interface (with IE, of course), sure enough, you can.....sort of. I, apparently, was not using the correct VERSION of IE to download these files from the NVR to my computer, because as soon as they were downloaded, for the life of me, I could not find them with Windows Explorer. I went back and tried to download the file again, but the Save As dialog showed that it was already there!! What the...? Back to Windows Explorer. Nothing. Do a windows search for the file. Nothing. Back to the Save As dialog? Still there?! That makes no sense! Hidden files? Nope. Permission issues? Nope. I could ONLY access the files locally by right-clicking on them in the stupid Save-As dialog. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this one?
3. Ok, at least I am able to watch the playback from my bed on the iPad....wait, did the app just freeze? Huh. Must have been a glitch. Close the playback window, open it again. Looks like it's playing fine aga---what?! Again?! Over and over and over again, the iPad app freezes during playback (this is not even mentioning the frequent 'out of memory' messages you get from the app on a regular basis, but that also happens in Dahua's IDMSS iPad app -which makes sense -they are essentially the same). And I am not saying it freezes after 5 minutes -try every 10 seconds of playback. Extremely frustrating if you are trying to look for footage from earlier.
The wrap-up:
Overall, this NVR is just not quite ready for prime time. It shows a LOT of potential, and I love that it will record 1080 video from multiple cameras, but accessing the video after it is recorded is just too much. I had hoped there would be firmware updates or something to address these issues, but I am seeing these issues mentioned in posts from a year ago and I still see no new firmware to fix it -after nearly a year of them knowing about the bugs. I am regretfully returning mine to Amazon due to these major flaws. I may just end up buying a NAS and enabling an FTP server on it to store my data. Sad day, indeed. I really wanted to like this NVR.
Oh, and in case you think it might be just my NVR? My friend had the exact same issues with his. It's just not quite ready for prime time. If you have solutions for any of these above issues (and please don't tell me to format the hard drive in the NVR -I've already read about all of that), I would love to hear them! Perhaps I would then keep it after all.
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