Thought I posted it earlier. But I would say if I was to do it again, I'd likely have purchased all IR based cameras, so either the Dahua 5442's or whatever is the equivalent Hikvision camera. The only reason to get a ColorVu type camera is where you're going to keep the LED light on at all times, want a camera that shines a spot light when a motion is triggered, or have ample ambient light.
With exposure set to 1/250, you can get "decent enough" video with minimal ghosting (thanks Alistair ...switched back to Normal noise reduction and 30 which helped). If you go higher than that to get more light, the picture certainly looks stunning, but motion suffers incredibly as people walk by (they look like ghosts).
Below is this morning, I have a street light across the street on the right side, and a street light on my right neighbours lawn, and the moon is out as well, albeit low since it is 6am. 1/250 exposure, 70 gain.
For situations like the below it's pretty good.
The second pic is from my Hik front door camera, which I have at 1/200 exp, 70 gain. You can see the street light post on the lawn. But I need to go to about 1/120 for decent exposure/light in the pic, but at that point motion is useless. But I have it set so that the LED comes on when an event is triggered, though I find it's hit and miss for whatever reason with the LED coming on, maybe because it is so dark the motion doesn't trigger.
A camera with IR on the other hand (backyard pic), provides a nice image. Is it color? No. Would the bad actor/person you capture in the video have somewhat IR Washed out details in the face? Yes. But the reality is it beats a ghosted image or a super dark image in that location where to use the Colorvu I had to keep the exposure at 1/120 or even 1/60 to get enough light in, at which point and in darkness I basically looked like the invisible man when I walked by at anything other than an absolute snails pace.
So the shortened answer is, if you have light as good or better than I do in my driveway area, or are okay using the LED spot light function, the colorvu camera is great. But for the vast majority of situations and good video with motion, I'm betting the IR would be a better choice. Plus the 5442's color capabilities are pretty darn close to the ColorVu to boot.
Outside of just IR, I also find the Dahua's have a much more tweakable firmware interface, and seem to be offering more "cutting edge" tech, such as people detection algorithms which the Hik at this level does not (albeit if you use
BlueIris, it doesn't really matter). Having said that, the Hik might be considered more "user friendly". since it doesn't have as many options.