Shopping directly from China always has its risks, you are somewhat protected by Aliexpress, so it's ok to use CC because the money goes into escrow and not the seller until you confirm you received the item in good shape. In general if you don't expect Amazon-like customer service and Apple like build quality on most things you buy from there you'll be fine.
forgot to mention, even the web browser side of the NVR would not display any video either. to me sounds like they are using a non standard h265 codec.