Is it confirmed that 3.4.2 will not have issues with hacked cams? i thought someone said that even in ONVIF profile those will have issues
3.4.0 was the version that axed the ONVIF workaround, not 3.4.2.
The people having issues with regional restrictions are people who:
A) purchased CH-region devices un-patched. Anymore you really have to TRY to do this as every one comes patched now. The Chinese have caught up in the cat mouse region game to where even if you blind sighted yourself to all of the regional restrictions and documentation on here, and picked up a CH device, it would work out of the box almost guaranteed.
B) tamper with the camera firmware. If it works, set it up, configure it, and leave it alone. There is little to no reason you should ever have to dial into the camera directly on a pure Hikvision setup. All of the important things are set in the NVR itself. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
C) update the firmware. This is technically a derivative of B but people get this idea that newer firmware is better. Hikvision in the past has proven this wrong on a few different occasions. If it works, leave it alone. And this is coming from a guy who is die hard bleeding edge. I update things ASAP whenever possible. (bad habit, bad practice, but I know how to dig myself out of a hole if that habit comes back to bite) However the cameras are too tedious for me to work with or care, so I let them go. The NVR on the other hand, you want that to be as current as possible as they do add features and fix bugs, and you'll only ever interface with the NVR directly, not the cameras.
As @
alastairstevenson said, if you were to purchase an "English" or "multilanguage" device, it's most likely a Chinese-region device and has had its internal region flag pre-patched. This means it will work with a US/Western-region NVR. I can confirm this personally. All of my jobs/projects involve Chinese cams with US NVRs. All of said NVRs are currently running 3.4.2, and the cams firmware vary from 5.2.0 to 5.3.8, 3MP and 4MP, all work great, full English language on everything, using the original Hikvision protocol, not ONVIF or any other silly workarounds.