OK, I think I am coming to the end of my search. There are many more places to look butI think I hit enough to get a good representative sampling at the low end (i.e. cheap end) of VMS's.
The short version is I think I will try Xeoma, because I think it is one of the more innovative, though it looks a bit risky. The most solid and complete seems to be BlueIris, but for a couple reasons it came in second for me. Zoneminder is a solid third, it will do everything I want, but just seems like I need to work too hard to get it where I want it. Several others I passed on for various reasons.
I did a long writeup of what I found for each one if anyone is interested. It is many pages, so I will not post it here and clutter up the forums. If you want to read, it is here:
http://www.leferguson.com/writeups-projects/security-camera-video-management-my-search
Comments welcomed (here - that site is not set up for comments at present).
It is highly opinionated and built around my requirements, which may not be yours. There is clearly not one perfect answer.
I'm going to spend the next couple weeks running wire and building a PC for it, and further experimentation. If I find some significant new information will post.
The short version is I think I will try Xeoma, because I think it is one of the more innovative, though it looks a bit risky. The most solid and complete seems to be BlueIris, but for a couple reasons it came in second for me. Zoneminder is a solid third, it will do everything I want, but just seems like I need to work too hard to get it where I want it. Several others I passed on for various reasons.
I did a long writeup of what I found for each one if anyone is interested. It is many pages, so I will not post it here and clutter up the forums. If you want to read, it is here:
http://www.leferguson.com/writeups-projects/security-camera-video-management-my-search
Comments welcomed (here - that site is not set up for comments at present).
It is highly opinionated and built around my requirements, which may not be yours. There is clearly not one perfect answer.
I'm going to spend the next couple weeks running wire and building a PC for it, and further experimentation. If I find some significant new information will post.