Of course, VBR saves disc space, no question. But as a residential user spending $2000-$3000+ on a system or even small business user for that matter, storage is cheap. I want the best possible image.
Geeking out about storage (unless in an enterprise environment where cost can become a factor) is akin to spending countless hours de-tuning your Ferrari to get better gas mileage.
Lol.. that is a reach. There is a big difference to not wanting to pony up for cash and being wasteful. 3x the space usage (especially at night), could make the difference between someone using constant recording vs trigger recording. I also find that even with 1gb pipes, VBR places less stress on the system (disks usage and writes, networks and system IO).
Who realistically wants to turn down 4x storage? because that's the difference I experience, and with Hikvision CBR doesn't seem superior it just works!!
At night my cameras with VBR (Dahua or Hikvision) use about 200 at night and 500 during during the day. That's a heck of a lot waste compared to chewing up 8000.
Instead of 12 storage, for CBR I would need 48 TB to maintain the same retention period. That's not being cheap, that's wasteful, not to mention the stress on the system.
At the end of the day your right, but given 70% of my cams are Dahua I am just frustrated that Dahu's VBR implementation is well let's be honest, "extremely poor". Hikvision VBR just works and you save a boatload of system resources and get much more miles for your money.