Standalone Or Pc Based?

[ICEbear]

I think your point of view, as that of Dave's is very clear. You still wonder how PC based machines like the Intellex managed to do so well for so many years although most manufacturers opted for the embedded route. Even LJD type distributors seem to get their share of the business.

A serious PC-Based DVR is born as a DVR and not as a PC, I think we can agree on that as well. There are to many examples of so called manufacturers banging Capture Boards in to PC's running a family package on a celeron processor with insufficient RAM to do anything substantial. There is no point looking for any support as there normally is none.

Are the DM machines still using the Maxtor drives or did they change to a different make?

very well put my friend

[kensplace]

I use a pc based geo system (1480 card) with the latest version software (8.2) it is very reliable, the only failure was when the psu in the pc literally went bang and started smoking, but s*** happens, and it only took a few mins to put in a replacement psu.

I also use a standalone visimetrics fastar, again very reliable, its linux based, in a rack mount style case, with pc control software. Quality is spot on.

Also have a spare honewell single channel DVR (which is actually a rebadged AVTEch machine, from looking at its mobo) which is a pile of c*** that I would hate to have paid good money for, lucky I got it cheap....

Both the geo system and the visimetrics work fine, but I prefer the ease of use of the geo system, as the fastar is a bit of a pain to use, although the quality (being mpeg2) is fantastic.

Plus with the geo system I have more control, such as editing files to include un-supported ptz etc, skinning it if required and should it be required, they have a good range of addons for I/O control, supported in the software.