RE: 4Ch PCI DVR on Ebay - 1/50th of Geovision price - Whats the catch

["Kevin Hawkins" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The main issue on the lower spec cards is SPEED - the number of frames you
can capture per second and also whether this is spread across (shared) on
all the inputs or available to each one and also under what combinations
this is shared. What I mean by that is what happens say when two sources
are
triggered and being recorded but two are not, how are the available fps
allocated. There is a related issue here in monitoring the untriggered
inputs if you are using motion detection too. They still have to be sampled
in case another input needs to go into alarm/record mode.

Another issue is that as the card scans across the inputs sequentially it
has to get a frame lock with each camera source and this takes time - often
several frames which slows down the round robin operation. Some cards synch
much faster and others require / work better when all your cameras are
frame
synched to each other in hardware ie the camera installation. Often those
mutiplex viewers (where you see several cameras displayed in windows on one
screen) require this. However the software frame grab applications
typically
don't.

The Geovision software is also really excellent and constantly being
upgraded (for free). Take a look at the manual for this downloadable from
the geovision site to see what fetaures it offeres and which are important
to you - for example motion detection and configurable screen areas and
sensitivities is very useful to me... I don't know how the eBAY item
compares here but I would suspect it is much less capable.

K

> -----Original Message-----
> From: A.Agiannidis [mailto:besmart@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 09 May 2004 12:38
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] 4Ch PCI DVR on Ebay - 1/50th of
> Geovision price - Whats the catch
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I am seriously considering building a PC-based DVR system
> at home. I checked the Geovision products on the rfconcepts page.
>
> I also came across the following one on ebay:
> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32
> 04&item=4166693590&rd=1
>
> Can someone please point out the pros and cons of going
> for this alternative instead of the famous Geovision?
>
> Many thanks,
> Thanos
>