None of this is worth it if the criminal just steals the unit. You have to put some form of online backup for it to be useful. Which brings to the next point, good luck with that with the bandwidth it will make daily.
just hide it and make it complicated enough to get to that it becomes too dangerous to spend lots of time taking it out, since most people who are concerned with security have an alarm too.
Also I guess you can use motion detection so that it uploads only relevants parts of the video?
You are giving your typical criminal way too much credit. Most thieves don't even think about cameras unless they see one staring them in the face. If you put this unit in with other networking equipment /servers will they really know what it is? They will most likely have no clue.
The price of this thing is what is criminal. $800? There are haswell nas out there for that price. Linksys better have some killer software or something to make people want to cough up $800 for a diskless mac.
800?? i was wtf too, i don't know too much about the other features, but a good (consumer) 2bay nas shouldn't cost more than 3-400 bucks without drives. what more is there to handle than a couple hd-streams?
It's the licensing for the CCTV you are paying for, not the hardware.
Synology's midrange 2-bay NASs (DS214+ ) cost about £300 empty in the UK, but you can only hook one camera up to them without buying more licenses, either individually at about £35/each or in groups of four for around £130ish (as I recall - I haven't rechecked the pricing, but you get the idea).
The QNAP Viostors come with eight camera licenses out of the box, as it were - they cost more like £500 diskless.
I'm preferring the Synology model meself - most of my customers who want CCTV only want a couple of cameras.
Also, having worked with both the QNAP and the Syno gear, I can tell you for a fact that you can set up port forwarding, dynDNS etc for the cameras, and have the DVR system on a totally unrelated site - say, your neighbours attic, or the office at work - and it'll still record fine, provided you have the bandwidth.
I tested this with my Syno and a customers 480p cameras on an Infinity2 (20mb upload) connection, and didn't get a single dropped frame.
Also, Andrewaggb below is not wrong - you are basically unlimited in the ways you can mix and match recording methodologies, especially where your cameras have the ability to upload footage over FTP/email independantly of what the DVR is doing (and it can upload to a remote site itself) so these devices definitely have their uses for pretty much anyone, from someone who just wants one camera to watch their moped parked outside their flat, to a small business or a school who ideally want offsite replication and multiple redundant copies of the footage; it's pretty much down to how much effort you want to put in; or more realistically, how much money you want to pay someone like myself or Andrew to put the effort in for you.
None of it would be too tricky for the typical, well versed AT reader, though.
I write nvr software and work with video monitoring firms, so I consider my opinion educated in this case.
Generally NVR's are in a server room or utility room. Some customers put them in the roof or other places you wouldn't guess.
Many cameras also have sd card local storage that can be motion-only. My video monitoring software uploads alert videos in real-time based on nvr or central station alerts (low res ones to conserve bandwidth).
It's not unreasonable to have up to 3 copies of recent footage for events of interest. In some cases you can also cluster nvrs.
I realize this linksys stuff probably doesn't do most of that automatically, but the sd cards are generally camera dependant and you could probably buy 2 of these linksys nvr's if you were really worried about it.
This NVR is a disaster, I spent several thousand dollars in Linksys SMB surveillance hardware and is unusable: The software has never been updated and it is full of bugs. Avoid it like a pest. Customer support does not care, they are not supporting this hardware since 2014 or so..
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12 Comments
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imaheadcase - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
None of this is worth it if the criminal just steals the unit. You have to put some form of online backup for it to be useful. Which brings to the next point, good luck with that with the bandwidth it will make daily.Murloc - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
just hide it and make it complicated enough to get to that it becomes too dangerous to spend lots of time taking it out, since most people who are concerned with security have an alarm too.Also I guess you can use motion detection so that it uploads only relevants parts of the video?
Einy0 - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
You are giving your typical criminal way too much credit. Most thieves don't even think about cameras unless they see one staring them in the face. If you put this unit in with other networking equipment /servers will they really know what it is? They will most likely have no clue.groundhogdaze - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
Hide it inside an empty CRT monitor. No one will steal one of those.extide - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
LOL, thats a good idea, hahahahpglow - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
The price of this thing is what is criminal. $800? There are haswell nas out there for that price. Linksys better have some killer software or something to make people want to cough up $800 for a diskless mac.hpglow - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
I ment NAS. Damn autocorrect.menting - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
well, you're not totally wrong...a diskless mac (if there was one), WOULD probably cost about that much :)fokka - Thursday, February 6, 2014 - link
800?? i was wtf too, i don't know too much about the other features, but a good (consumer) 2bay nas shouldn't cost more than 3-400 bucks without drives. what more is there to handle than a couple hd-streams?Beany2013 - Saturday, February 8, 2014 - link
It's the licensing for the CCTV you are paying for, not the hardware.Synology's midrange 2-bay NASs (DS214+ ) cost about £300 empty in the UK, but you can only hook one camera up to them without buying more licenses, either individually at about £35/each or in groups of four for around £130ish (as I recall - I haven't rechecked the pricing, but you get the idea).
The QNAP Viostors come with eight camera licenses out of the box, as it were - they cost more like £500 diskless.
I'm preferring the Synology model meself - most of my customers who want CCTV only want a couple of cameras.
Also, having worked with both the QNAP and the Syno gear, I can tell you for a fact that you can set up port forwarding, dynDNS etc for the cameras, and have the DVR system on a totally unrelated site - say, your neighbours attic, or the office at work - and it'll still record fine, provided you have the bandwidth.
I tested this with my Syno and a customers 480p cameras on an Infinity2 (20mb upload) connection, and didn't get a single dropped frame.
Also, Andrewaggb below is not wrong - you are basically unlimited in the ways you can mix and match recording methodologies, especially where your cameras have the ability to upload footage over FTP/email independantly of what the DVR is doing (and it can upload to a remote site itself) so these devices definitely have their uses for pretty much anyone, from someone who just wants one camera to watch their moped parked outside their flat, to a small business or a school who ideally want offsite replication and multiple redundant copies of the footage; it's pretty much down to how much effort you want to put in; or more realistically, how much money you want to pay someone like myself or Andrew to put the effort in for you.
None of it would be too tricky for the typical, well versed AT reader, though.
Steven R
andrewaggb - Friday, February 7, 2014 - link
I write nvr software and work with video monitoring firms, so I consider my opinion educated in this case.Generally NVR's are in a server room or utility room. Some customers put them in the roof or other places you wouldn't guess.
Many cameras also have sd card local storage that can be motion-only. My video monitoring software uploads alert videos in real-time based on nvr or central station alerts (low res ones to conserve bandwidth).
It's not unreasonable to have up to 3 copies of recent footage for events of interest. In some cases you can also cluster nvrs.
I realize this linksys stuff probably doesn't do most of that automatically, but the sd cards are generally camera dependant and you could probably buy 2 of these linksys nvr's if you were really worried about it.
jangoloti - Sunday, November 11, 2018 - link
This NVR is a disaster, I spent several thousand dollars in Linksys SMB surveillance hardware and is unusable: The software has never been updated and it is full of bugs. Avoid it like a pest. Customer support does not care, they are not supporting this hardware since 2014 or so..