DVR Security System Review

Speco have created a number of DVR’s designed to act as the core component of a surveillance system. The DVR-16IP/160 is not the most advanced Speco DVR available but its features are adequate for the purpose of setting up a CCTV system. The DVR comes with a 160-gigabyte hard drive for storing the video from your surveillance cameras and this is interchangeable. If you need more storage space you can install a hard drive that has up to a 600-gigabyte capacity. Video can also be copied to CD as the Speco DVR has a built in CD writer. You can attach up to 16 cameras to the Speco DVR, the system records video at a maximum of 120 frames per second.

Wavelet video compression is used with the DVR as opposed to mpeg-4, you can select up to 5 different levels of recording quality. The system can record video at up to 720*240 resolution in NTSC and slightly higher when recording in PAL 720*288. The DVR has a BNC*16 video output, the video can be viewed with a standard PC monitor. Video recorded by the DVR can be monitored with its picture in picture feature and it also has a zoom feature.

Video recorded by the system can also be viewed through Internet Explorer as the DVR can be connected straight to your computer network or to the Internet. You can use dynamic IP addresses with the DVR and it has DDNS support. When viewing your surveillance camera activities remotely you can use a Static IP address with the DVR for added security. The Speco DVR can be set to record constantly or you can schedule recording. Alternatively you can set the DVR to record events only during periods when motion is detected or when an attached camera is in alarm condition.

The user interface for the DVR-16IP/160 doesn’t have an abundance of features but it does have ‘watch dog mode’. Watch dog mode ensures the DVR retains its settings if your premises should experience a power outage, when power is restored the DVR resumes it previous opperations. If you decide the hard drive needs to be upgraded at a time the DVR-16IP/160 is in use the design of the system makes doing so an easy job. You can set the DVR-16IP/160 to record to CD and change the hard drive while the system continues its job of video surveillance.

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