DVR Security System Review

The Q-See QSD2604 digital video recorder can accommodate up to four surveillance cameras, these are attached to the four BNC ports at the rear of the device.  You can control many of the DVR’s functions with the buttons on its front panel; from here you can start or stop the device from recording and control what it displays on connected monitors.  One of the buttons on the front of system allows you to quickly switch to quad mode enabling you to monitor the output from four surveillance cameras simultaneously.

At maximum the DVR is capable of recording video footage at a pixel resolution of 720*240 in NTSC mode, in PAL mode the image quality can be increased marginally to 720*288.  The DVR has a maximum recording speed of sixty frames per second and it uses MPEG-4 video compression, the maximum image resolution of the device when playing back security camera footage matches it maximum recording resolution.  Recorded sound is also compressed by the system; the DVR uses ADPCM audio compression to reduce the amount of hard drive space used for storing video.

Video recorded by the DVR can be stored on internal hard drives, these are not included as standard with the system but this particular one has includes one with a 250-gigabyte capacity.  You can connect the DVR to the Internet or to a local area network as it has an Ethernet port, you can use this to attach the system directly to a broadband router.  By connecting the DVR to a network you can monitor cameras attached to it and control the functions of the DVR while away from your home or business.

When the DVR is networked you can use Internet Explorer to monitor your security cameras output, pan tilt and zoom cameras can also be attached to the system, these are connected through its RS485 port.  Cameras are not included with Q-See QSD2604 as standard but four are included in this case, these have a CCD image sensor and are suitable for outdoor use.  The problem with the cameras included is that they don’t have pan tilt and zoom functions but the RS485 port may come in handy if you mean to attach such cameras in the future.

Four preset levels of image quality can be selected with the DVR, selecting one of these not only effects the quality of recorded video but also has an impact on video storage space used.  You can also adjust the frame rate of recorded video, lower frame rate can make the job of finding specific video footage an easier one the recorded video also requires less storage space.

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