Much has been said about H.264 compression and in general it appears that the network performance is very good but the recorded quality is not so good especially when compared to likes of JPEG2000, not my opinion just my interpretation of what has been posted on this forum.

But have we yet seen the full potential of H.264?

From my experience, the main producers of H.264 are Chinese manufacturers who have used H.264 to break into the mass DVR market (very successfully in many cases) but there seems to be too many comprimises to get the benefit of H.264 from these manufacturers, for example:

Recording in realtime across 16 Channels in CIF or even HD1 does not seem to much of an issue because the compression is performed by hardware but when it comes to playing back (a processor hungry process for H.264) many of these machines can only playback 1 camera at a time, 4 playback (out of 16) is the best I have seen from these sources.

Many will only record in CIF.

This year will see the release of H.264 DVRs from more familar brand names, I can only assume they were waiting to perfect the technology and have addressed the issues highlighted above (not an assumption). With these releases I expect a much better performance from H.264 living up to the theory that its a higher quality than MPEG4 with a smaller file size.

Is your experience similar or have you a different view?

SORRY I AM REFERING TO STAND ALONE MACHINES ONLY.

Edited April 17, 200818 yr by digitalwitness

Has anyone used a H.264 Stand Alone DVR that they would recommend?

Please share experiences good or bad, much appreciated.

Thanks.

Edited April 18, 200818 yr by digitalwitness