# DVR Recommendations for Small Office Surveillance System?



## Reid Burnham (Jan 12, 2014)

The old DVR has 8 BNC inputs, a 500 Gbyte HD and the ability to connect remotely via the internet. Pretty basic. Unfortuneately it does a turn-off/turn-on cycle thing where it runs for 3 minutes, "freezes", shuts-down and then restarts 10 minutes later. I've been all over the box inside (configurations) and out (inspecting the circuit board, etc...) and I've condemned it as non-repairable, and need to find a replacement.

The current box seems to have some basic alarm system interfaces, which I really don't understand, but I think it would be a good idea to keep the functionality that they were given when the box was installed (by an expensive, professional company). I'd just like to swap the bad box for a good box and move on.

Any recommendations for a US-based small business for around $500?


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## Reid Burnham (Jan 12, 2014)

I've just spent about 5 minutes looking at ebay and have discovered there is a wide price variation for this type of equipment. On one website I had to really dig to find a DVR for around $400 and yet on eBay they are selling entire systems with cameras and everything for less than $300.

What gives? Is there some technical specification that makes one system more desirable (and expensive) than another? I look for specs like video resolution, etc.. and cannot figure out how to discriminate between a cheap system and an expensive one.


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## JMPC (Jan 15, 2011)

There are a few things that will factor into cost/quality:
The software installed on the unit as well as if they support browsers, mobile devices. How many cameras it supports, does it support wireless or power over Ethernet. 
Are the cameras equipped with CMOS or CCD sensors. 
The camera resolution/frames per second. 
Hard drive size/RAID redundancy


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