Solid DVR Security Capture Card

I paid $69 for this card from Tigerdirect. You can get a similar card from Ebay, straight from Taiwan, for about $15 that boasts the same features. I opted to get this card instead based purely on reviews, and after reading how pathetic, unsupported, and bug-ridden the software for the cheaper cards is. After all, what's a mere seventy bucks when an equivalent standalone DVR would cost you $500?

The SuperDVR software that comes with this is not exactly what I would call "user friendly" -- it's a grid of checkboxes and switches, but it all makes sense if you take the time to figure it out. It's powerful, flexible, and very stable, without being overly flashy. The motion detection capabilities are the best part. It allows you to draw boxes in each different camera's viewing frame where you want motion detection active. Then you can set seperate sensitivities for the different cameras. It also has an adjustable buffer time, so that when it sees something move, it actually records the 5 seconds BEFORE it saw any motion until the motion is gone and the screen has been still again for another preset time.

All DVR companies try to "mislead" about their capture framerates. This card says 30fps. The catch is, that's with one camera only. Add 3 more cameras, and they're only 7fps a piece. I'm no video expert, but I do have a wristwatch, and it looked more like 4fps instead of the indicated 7. A look on Q-See's website states that the 30fps is a "theoretical" number, and the "actual" framerate is about half of that. Shady bas%$#$*... All DVR cards that boast 30fps are like this though. It's annoying, but realistically, what kind of frame rate do you need to get a good mug shot? I've only got 2 cameras, so they are both at around 7fps, which seems more than adequate to bust someone.

My cameras are chinsy waterproof black and white jobbies I got just to get rolling.. They work, but are fuzzy. When I hook my $600 Sony handycam up to it, it's crisp and clear. The software and motion detection works equally well with cheap or expensive cameras, and the file sizes are about the same either way. It records AVI files to a preset folder off the of root of whatever drives you specify. They are in MPG4 format. Leaving the cameras on motion detection record mode only, it sucks about 500megs per day of space for me. (That's with giant moths at night and my girlfriend mooning the camera every now and then during the day.) I'm running it on a screaming-fast AMD AM2 with tons of ram, and I barely even notice that the DVR is running while using the computer for other things. I have dual 200gb internal HDs, so I can record for as long as I want. That beats the crap out of a standalone DVR.

The playback part of the program is not bad at all. You choose the day you want to review, which video channels you're interested in, and use a scroll bar at the bottom that is marked off in 24 hour increments. It works fine, and if you don't like it for some reason, you can use any video tool you like to review the AVI files manually.

You'll need some computer skills to setup the remote viewing and playback features. Specifically, you'll want to use no-ip.com so that you can always hit your server, and you will have to set your router to allow traffic through some specific ports. With a little research, I found numerous online guides describing how to do this. I found that the motion detection email notification feature of the program didn't work at all. Test mails sent fine, but it does NOT automail when it detects motion. After trying every possible combination of checkboxes and dancing like an idiot in front of the camera, I emailed Q-see about this problem and got an email response from them within a day telling me to hit the support page on their website for the updated drivers. I downloaded the new version and it looked exactly like the old version. The version in the screenshots the guy sent me seems to have a few more tabs and features than mine, so it must be a newer version -- but that's not what the newest version WE can get (4.4.3) looks like.. What's the deal, is their version in the screenshots not released yet? I asked them about this, and got a one-line response telling me to try disabling my virus protection software and my firewall. Don't insult my intelligence, and fix your broken program. I stopped talking to them. Automail does not work.

I was very concerned about the Automail not working at first, since it seemed to be the only thing that would keep someone from kicking in my back door, stealing my whole computer, and leaving with no evidence. But... if you use your head, there are multiple ways around this problem. Hide your drives.

UPDATE 8/16/2007:
I have learned more about PC DVR cards. Q-See AND Swann communications are using the same software for their DVR cards -- SuperDVR. Furthermore, Swann's website has the latest version of SuperDVR (4.6.2 beta), which works perfectly with my Q-see DVR card. I'd be willing to bet that it works with every make of PC DVR card in existance. In light of this new information, I recommend you go to Ebay and buy the cheapest $10 DVR card you can find. Then trash the junk software that comes with your card, go to Swann's website here, (http://www.swann.com.au/s/techcenter/product/?product=379&submit=go) and download the newest version of SuperDVR. Also, I discovered how to make automail work -- login, enter the information to automail like your SMTP server and such, then LOG OUT of the software without closing it... The software only sends mail when no users are logged into it. The only thing I can't do now is view my cameras remotely from work -- my work's firewall explicitly restricts certain ports. There's probably a way to get around this by http tunneling or something similar, but I haven't had time to mess with it. The emails are good enough for me.