Dvd Hdd? Newbie Help

[Guest walls]

A really simple newbie question (I hope)

I have a samsung HDD DVD recorder. I plan to purchase one cctv camera to monitor my car during the night. No point spending money on an extra hardware so would I be right in thinking this would be perfectly able to record continuously from the camera?

Is there a general maximum resolution that hhd dvd recorders are able to record at? (if lower than the camera output I guess it would be wasting money?)

in advance

walls

[Matt the Teckie]

Personally, I wouldn't go less than 2CIF but results will depend on the compression technique used by the DVR, the size of the file deposited on the HDD and the size of the target area within the scene.

My guess is that if you're monitoring your own car, you're going to discover any damage quite quickly, certainly within 14 hours of the damage being done. This being the case, I wouldn't worry about the HDD getting full and run the system to the max.

However, your biggest concern is likley to be the quality of the picture you feed the DVR. Is the lighting good enough to illuminate the scene? If it's not, DVR's hate AGC noise (turn AGC off if you can), especially those using MPEG or Wavelet compression (they tend to perceive the noise as motion therefore either forcing I-frames or blurring what little pictures you have).

Don't fall into the trap of using a very low light camera (using an "open-shutter" mode), you'll get a lovely picture till something moves. Kinda defeats the object.

Hope this helps

[Guest walls]

Matt,

the car is only parked a few metres from the house and I plan to mount the camera under the second floor windowsill. I'll used some kind of camera with IR illumination so I'm hoping this will be adequate.

I guess my question really is, is a home dvd hdd recorder sufficient for one camera instead of shelling out for a dedicated DVR where I wouldn't use all the functionality.

[Matt the Teckie]

No worries fella,

Can't see there being a problem but I suggest a quick suck-it-and-see experiment tonight (if you'll pardon the expression).

Good luck

[Rich]

Can you supply the model of the recorder (web link), maybe we can find some info regarding recording resolution and settings that may help you out a bit more.

[Guest walls]

thanks guys

here's the model with specs:

http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/dvdplay...=Specifications

bit long in the tooth now but would be useful if it fits the purpose

and was thinking about hooking it up to this kind of camera http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/colour_sony_ir.htm