Hi everyone

I'm absolutely new to all this and this will be my first setup.

Because I'm a PC engineer a friend of mine asked me to do a small business setup of five cameras.

She assumed (foolishly) that because I know Pc's that I would know all about this and I assumed (also foolishly)

That there was not much to it.

Anyway, I'm reading as much as I can on the net and trying to glean information and have decided to go the PC route

because I already have the machines.

Various peeps have said that Geovision cards are the best but they seem so expensive. Can you advise me on more

reasonably priced alternatives that come with good software?

Thanks in advance.

Bob

Bob you get what you pay for mate, hence the cost of geovision cards

Avermedia seem to have some new cards out that i've heard good reports of

good luck with your quest, if its a small basic install i would go for a standalone DVR and save yourself some time

Hi everyone

I'm absolutely new to all this and this will be my first setup.

Because I'm a PC engineer a friend of mine asked me to do a small business setup of five cameras.

She assumed (foolishly) that because I know Pc's that I would know all about this and I assumed (also foolishly)

That there was not much to it.

Anyway, I'm reading as much as I can on the net and trying to glean information and have decided to go the PC route

because I already have the machines.

Various peeps have said that Geovision cards are the best but they seem so expensive. Can you advise me on more

reasonably priced alternatives that come with good software?

Thanks in advance.

Bob

hi bob,

i have used geovision cards with absolutely no hassles, older cards needed pentuim chips (had sound issues), the newer ones will work with both pentium and amd.

they come in several compression flavours (and so prices), very big advantage is they don't need fixed a ip address for remote access, you register with geovision download the free remote software and bob's your aunt (oops! sorry Bob ).

i'd advise to set up 2 partitions, OS and software on 1st partition with plenty of spare space for windows temp file, store data on 2nd partition or drive.

regs

alan

Thanks for that.

Guess it is Geovision after all.

I've now found that she does have a dynamic IP address and, of course, the PC has an AMD chip . . . .

Thanks for that.

Guess it is Geovision after all.

I've now found that she does have a dynamic IP address and, of course, the PC has an AMD chip . . . .

On most of the new PCI and PCI Express capture cards the AMD/Pentium chip is not an issue any more, but on older systems that have more than one capture chip and sport a Hint Bridge Controller then you can have issues with compatability with the north bridge chip on some motherboards.

I have used Geo for quite some time and the software is indeed excellent....however Avermedia have made some huge advances and because Avermedia is a true manufactorer, I expect that the costs will eventually be cheaper.

There are a lot of other card options...but none seem as good as these two are, I am not a huge fan of PC Based systems and I advise you that a standalone is a much better place to start for beginners!