DVR Question

[Mike P]

Hi, I am looking to build a DVR, I have plenty of experance with commercial products, We install many of them, the problem is the ones we install are very expensive. I am looking to buy a pc and dvr software. The pc is the easy part. Can anybody recommend the software portion? Nothing fancy, just a good record rate and the ability to control and review remotely.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[sic0048]

EDIT - Sorry I misunderstood the OP's question. Striked to prevent confusion.

I know it isn't exactly what you are asking for, but personally I would recommend using SageTV as the software base and using a HD-200 HD Theater extender. It is a high definition extender that they sell that would take the place of you playback machine. You can buy the software and HD Theater for a bundled price of $225.

You still need another computer to actually record your shows. But it can be a fairly low power machine - expecially depending on the tuner cards you use. If you use cards that utilize onboard decoding, then the machine is really only saving data to the hard drives. Almost any old machine can be turned into your DVR server. All the encoding and processing that needs to take place is done on the HD extender itself and doesn't require any computer CPU power to do any of that.

If you have a computer that you can use for the SageTV server (even if you use it for other purposes - it doesn't need to be dedicated only to being the SageTV server), then using SageTV and the HD-200 is a very inexpensive option. You would be hard pressed to buy/build a new computer that is comparable to the HD-200 for less than $225.

 

[signal15]

MythTV is another completely free solution. But you'll still have to build a box for it. The nice part is that you can run the Myth server in the basement, and install Myth clients on multiple machines on the network. No idea how it works over the internet.

 

[TXFlatLander]

I think he is meaning security DVR. A lot of people use Zoneminder. It is open source and has a pretty big following.

 

[Mike P]

Thanks, I am talking about a security DVR to record cameras.

Mike

 

[signal15]

I use Zoneminder. It works quite well. However, using it to do motion detection on a 3 Megapixel camera completely buries the CPU on a 3ghz P4. If you have cameras that do their own motion detection, or have a motion trigger, then you can offload that part of it from the server.

The zoneminder interface sucks though. I'm not a fan. All they need is a decent web designer to fix the interface or at least make it all CSS based so you could put in your own stylesheet. But, it does work, and does what it's supposed to.

You might also check out the Synology NAS devices. They have a cam server built into them. I think they support 1 camera out of the box, but you have to pay for a license to get them to support more cameras.

http://www.synology.com/enu/index.php

They also can serve video to XBOX 360 or PS3 with DLNA, and have the ability to pull RSS feeds and automatically download stuff via bitorrent or Usenet (via NZB files). Pretty slick little devices.

 

[drvnbysound]

I have briefly looked at running Zoneminder myself. Unfortunately I have limited experience with Linux and have reservations about going that route due to my inexperience. Are there any open source CCTV software suites for Windows based platforms that are as good?

Ive Googled for them, and have personally only come up with stuff I've definitely never heard ... and sites that look like they were developed by a caveman - no pun Geico man

 

[signal15]

I have briefly looked at running Zoneminder myself. Unfortunately I have limited experience with Linux and have reservations about going that route due to my inexperience.

You can download a LiveCD version of it, or a VMWare image with everything set up here:
http://www.zoneminder.com/downloads.html

The LiveCD images are farther down the page, they are a couple of versions behind.

The only way to get experience is to just do it. It's not like you're going to break something expensive. And if you do, you keep both halves. There are plenty of howto's and forums with people willing to help you.

 

[Monk]

I have briefly looked at running Zoneminder myself. Unfortunately I have limited experience with Linux and have reservations about going that route due to my inexperience.

You can download a LiveCD version of it, or a VMWare image with everything set up here:
http://www.zoneminder.com/downloads.html

The LiveCD images are farther down the page, they are a couple of versions behind.

The only way to get experience is to just do it. It's not like you're going to break something expensive. :lol: And if you do, you keep both halves. There are plenty of howto's and forums with people willing to help you.

The VMware appliance seems to be available via .torrent only - anyone know of another means to get it?

 

[drvnbysound]

You can download a LiveCD version of it, or a VMWare image with everything set up here:
http://www.zoneminder.com/downloads.html

The LiveCD images are farther down the page, they are a couple of versions behind.

The only way to get experience is to just do it. It's not like you're going to break something expensive. :lol: And if you do, you keep both halves. There are plenty of howto's and forums with people willing to help you.

Ehh, its not only lack of experience though. I just recently started doing SMALL amounts with Linux, but it is on pretty well locked systems, where all I was doing is configuring NIC ports, mounting files and installing software all via commands. But, its also the fact that its a lot less likely to be able to dual purpose the PC with other HA software being Linux based. I do want to read up more on VMWare though... Just seems like it would be easier if there was a GOOD Windows-based open-source application

 

[twilo123]

i don't know how 'commercial' grade it is for dvr security but you can look at webcamxp or luxriot.

if your focus is just a cheap dvr then you can probably just go the route of a chinese import

maybe check out geovision. avermedia has some cheap stuff also which is decent (their linux line is the cheapest).

then you have the typical nuvico (apex lite), everfocus, etc. DM just came out with their ecosense line. i know they aren't usually cheap but you could check the price on that new entry level product.

 

[Jreigner]

I run a p4 3.0ghz Dell with onboard video running eyemax software. I have 32 channels, remote view anywhere in the world, built in motion detection, tv output and audio recording. The software is free and the cards can be had for around 400 on up. Even with 20 cameras it doesn't bog the pc and have gotten 2-1/2 months out of a 500gb drive. Another part which has not been addressed is the concept that the best cameras are worth as much as as the recording device it goes to.
Any one, even kids, can determine fake cameras pretty quickly.

www.eyemaxdvr.com

 

[mustangcoupe]

Jreigner

can you please post some more information about the software you are using, maybe start a new thread just about it as I have never heard of this software/company

Is is proprietary to the hardware? or will it work with any card?
Is it windows biased? Is it required to be run on dedicated hardware? I know it is not the best idea for performance but could it be run on the same machine as a HA server?
Can you post some screen shots?

edited for spelling ;0