Q-See QSPDVR04 4 Channel Digital Video Recorder PCI Card
by Digital Peripheral Solutions
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List Price: Our Price: $71.99 You Save: $28.00 (28%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Q-See QSPDVR04 4 Channel Digital Video Recorder PCI Card
Customer Review: It does the job
Summary: 4 Stars
Was looking for something modestly priced mainly to see the front of my house from my basement office. Setup was easy and it seems to work. The only drawbacks are that you can't hide the window from the taskbar, relocate the window (it's locked in the upper corner of the screen), and my screen won't "sleep" when the dvr program is running.Customer Review: Good functionality - flimsy connectors
Summary: 4 Stars
I concur with the majority of the reviews; however, two of the BNC connectors broke while I was easing the PC back into its space. It was difficult to understand how these could have broken so easily.Customer Review: Hardware is Great
Summary: 4 Stars
The hardware that we purchased is great. The only problem was that the software didn't do everything we wanted it to do. We ended up buying two of them.Customer Review: Excellent device
Summary: 4 Stars
Good for monitoring and recording videos for 24h with grate features like motion detection etc.Customer Review: It works and it's cheap
Summary: 3 Stars
It works and it's cheap. The card is great. The software is...lacking. It REQUIRES you to be logged on to Windows to record, so there is absolutely no way you can install it as a "Windows Service" on a server machine in the closet (I've even tried running it as a scheduled task and using a "any program as a service" program -- it doesn't work beacause it require a DirectX drawing surface (not available without a screen) to even start up for JUST recording).
So you have to basically run XP or Vista as a makeshift "server" and have it autologon and lock the keyboard so nobody can mess with your machine until the screen locks. It will crash if you lock your computer before the software loads, because you cannot ignore DirectX rendering problems (when you lock your computer, there's no screen for it to render on).
The software was obviously outsourced to some foreign country because the translations are terrible and the UI is different from any other Windows program. The browser plugins/remote viewing software is very basic. Again, the UI is crap. The plugins are NOT signed, so if you have ActiveX signing requirements, you'll have to jump through hurdles to get it to work. The good news is that once it's installed, the remote viewing software works well. Final complaint: it requires 1024x768 or greater viewing area for everything. So it hogs screen space on a low-res monitor, and is microscopic on a high-res monitor. It would be better if it would allow dynamic resizing.
Well, that's a lot of complaining, but it really does work well and is very stable. You can even set it to automatically reboot your computer periodically if you have a very unstable old system. The main DVR program is pretty packed full of features. The password system is very flexible in what user has what rights. It's not bad. I guess for the price, it's a "you get what you pay for" thing, but not necessarily in a bad way. I was expecting a better UI based on the company literature, but what I got was a lousy UI, but a more feature packed software package than I thought. I suppose it depends on what your priorities are.
The latest version of the software on the website says it's Vista compatible, but I didn't take the risk. It was hard enough to get working on XP.
For my next DVR card, I'm going to thoroughly demo the software before buying.