HDW4433C-A, a risky proposition?

[MacFun]

Okay, I know I'm going to need and want a few 5231s, however the HDW4433C-A is a third of the cost. I don't know much about this cam either than it looks like the previous version of the 5231 cosmetically. I see it being sold for as low as $48 delivered and it has audio too!

Please help me to understand the different versions of these cams so I don't buy one with non-upgradeable firmware or some other problem.

Dahua 4MP IP camera IPC HDW4433C A POE network Build in Mic IR 30M $48.21
Dahua 4MP IP camera IPC HDW4433C A POE network Build in Mic IR 30M security CCTV Dome camera-in Surveillance Cameras from Security & Protection on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

Wow, just found it via eBay for $18.
Dahua IPC-HDW4433C-A 4MP Turret 1080P POE Mic H.265, $18.99
Dahua IPC-HDW4433C-A 4MP Dome Turret 1080P POE CCTV Camera Mic H.265 | eBay

Just to get started it looks attractive, based on the price at least.... So, what should I be looking out for? I don't want it to not work in the future because it's a certain version that's later deemed to be the black sheep of the family.

Is the focal length fixed? I mean if I want 3.6mm over 2.8mm are these two different SKUs?

I assume that I want NTSC and not PAL and that would be a specific product too and have a different SKU--yes?

Thanks,

Robert

 

[mat200]

Okay, I know I'm going to need and want a few 5231s, however the HDW4433C-A is a third of the cost. I don't know much about this cam either than it looks like the previous version of the 5231 cosmetically. I see it being sold for as low as $48 delivered and it has audio too!

Please help me to understand the different versions of these cams so I don't buy one with non-upgradeable firmware or some other problem.

Dahua 4MP IP camera IPC HDW4433C A POE network Build in Mic IR 30M $48.21
Dahua 4MP IP camera IPC HDW4433C A POE network Build in Mic IR 30M security CCTV Dome camera-in Surveillance Cameras from Security & Protection on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

Wow, just found it via eBay for $18.
Dahua IPC-HDW4433C-A 4MP Turret 1080P POE Mic H.265, $18.99
Dahua IPC-HDW4433C-A 4MP Dome Turret 1080P POE CCTV Camera Mic H.265 | eBay

Just to get started it looks attractive, based on the price at least.... So, what should I be looking out for? I don't want it to not work in the future because it's a certain version that's later deemed to be the black sheep of the family.

Is the focal length fixed? I mean if I want 3.6mm over 2.8mm are these two different SKUs?

I assume that I want NTSC and not PAL and that would be a specific product too and have a different SKU--yes?

Thanks,

Robert

Hi Robert,

On ebay the "bracket" for the camera is $18.99, not the camera. The Camera is $59.99

The camera IPC-HDW4433C-A is a Chinese Market camera.. due to the limited disposable income in China products typically made for the Chinese market will have some compromises to help keep the costs down, they may use "plastic" bodies instead of metal as well as cheaper electronic components - more affordable imaging chips, less memory, no microSD card slots. Some Chinese market cameras are hacked to support English - and thus it maybe very challenging to update or even restore the firmware.

please see the notes regarding chinese market cameras
IPCamTalk WiKi | IP Cam Talk

and
#9 in my notes
Looking for some advice and direction!

 

[tigerwillow1]

I'm running a few chinese market 4mp cameras, not the 4433c-a, and as well as a couple of 2mp starlight cameras. My experience is that it's a simple cost-vs-capability tradeoff. The daylight image of the chinese cameras is just as good, while the 2mp starlights are significantly better in low light situations. Personally I see the biggest risk being with the supplier. These are all grey market cameras, meaning if something goes wrong you're at the mercy of whoever you bought it from. The forum members have found a reliable supplier for the international market cameras ( which the 5231 is). I've not had any problems with the chinese market cameras. If I had I could have been left "holding the bag", depending on the response of the seller. If the camera ships from China, sending it back could cost a bundle, no matter who the seller is.

 

[MacFun]

How do you know what cameras are Chinese Market?

 

[mat200]

How do you know what cameras are Chinese Market?

Hi MacFun,

If the model is not on the Dahua USA nor international site it is likely to be a Chinese market camera.
Also, if the vendor tells you not to update the firmware.
Or if the label on the camera is in Chinese.

 

[bp2008]

I have a few of the Chinese-Market 4MP cams, actually earlier models that didn't have built-in microphones. They're a great value. Not as good at night as the starlights of course, but not as expensive either. I don't know what the firmware situation is like now, but back when I was buying these, you could simply install modded firmware from Dahua Firmware Mod Kit + Modded Dahua Firmware which improves a few things and provides multiple languages. I've heard that Dahua started signing their firmware and preventing installation of unsigned firmware so that might be a problem with new purchases.

Here is the current best deal I can find on a 4MP model ($50) that even offers two lens options: http://a.co/i2MI1WW It is a 4431C rather than 4433C, and I'm not sure what the difference is except that 4431C is older and there is a custom firmware build for it in the link above. I'm just not sure you'll be able to install it if the firmware that comes on the camera is relatively new.

There are also some 6MP Chinese-Market cams typically available around $70-75.

 

[VorlonFrog]

I still have two of the older 4431C cameras around my garage. They were purchased inexpensively, and updated with Cor35vet's modded firmware before Dahua closed the doors. Daylight performance is excellent, while night time performance is acceptable. Given their price, they were an excellent value, with some risk as already discussed above.

 

[ReviewG]

I have 4 of them, well two 4431c and two 4433c, I'm slowly replacing them with IPC-HFW4231T-ASE from Empire as I wanted better nighttime performance and a high frame rate. Totally worth the extra cost to have starlight and double the fps. Also I find the 4431c and 4433c can be slow to respond and I keep having to disable the audio as the hacked software doesn't like to keep this setting for some reason.

 

[looney2ns]

I have a few of the Chinese-Market 4MP cams, actually earlier models that didn't have built-in microphones. They're a great value. Not as good at night as the starlights of course, but not as expensive either. I don't know what the firmware situation is like now, but back when I was buying these, you could simply install modded firmware from Dahua Firmware Mod Kit + Modded Dahua Firmware which improves a few things and provides multiple languages. I've heard that Dahua started signing their firmware and preventing installation of unsigned firmware so that might be a problem with new purchases.

Here is the current best deal I can find on a 4MP model ($50) that even offers two lens options: http://a.co/i2MI1WW It is a 4431C rather than 4433C, and I'm not sure what the difference is except that 4431C is older and there is a custom firmware build for it in the link above. I'm just not sure you'll be able to install it if the firmware that comes on the camera is relatively new.

There are also some 6MP Chinese-Market cams typically available around $70-75.

FYI: Price in your link is now $60.00.

 

[holiday]

Hi i bought one of these cheaply off fleabay for testing purposes and I wasn't really happy with it initially. (Don't really like the Plastic case and the one button "Quick release" camera from mount)

It is the hacked version and came with the warning "firmware cannot be updated" but I flashed the latest Chinese firmware into it and seems to be better now and a little bit more usable.

As expected, the user interface has reverted back to chinese, but I am able to navigate it with my limited understanding of chinese.


I found a few goodies in the chinese firmware not in the hacked english firmware. I tried searching on the forum but I couldn't find any post about this topic about so I thought I will ask here.

Has anyone with 4433C-A flashed chinese firmware on their's?
if yes, did you managed to get these features working? Thanks.

It appears to support more encoding (Not sure what are the difference)





Supports the SFTP protocol
I managed to get it to work and the camera has saved some "DAV" files in my FTP server.





Appears to support "SMB" protocol in NAS (Windows Share / SAMBA protocol )
I haven't managed to get it to work yet or to get the camera to save anything in the "SAMBA" share drive yet




It also appear to support "SIP" or Voice over IP?? (Not sure how to get it working)





Flashed Chinese firmware from
www.dahuatech.com (the address printed on the box)

 

[ReviewG]

My replacement project for the ones that I have is speeding up. These are extremely moody and sometimes like to forget that a camera should be a camera.

 

[mmmburritos]

I've got a couple Chinese cameras, that's how I got started because I didn't want to spend $150+ not knowing what I was getting into. I have a 4421C and a 4431C-A, both have very good daytime picture quality and the night quality isn't that bad either with the IR illuminator on. I also have a couple of better Dahua's from Andy. I'm running the hacked firmware from this forum on both my Chinese cameras, so they're both stuck on versions from 2016.

That being said, one complaint about mixing the cheap cameras with better ones is that they use different browser plugins, so I have a hard time flipping back and forth between viewing one or another to setup IVS or other things. Another thing is that the cheap cameras don't have microSD slots, so if I want to save anything from an IVS trigger it's gotta go to my NFS storage directly and it's a bit of a pain to retrieve and view compared to my better cameras where I can just go to the web interface or SmartPSS to play it back easily.

My plan is to replace the two cheap cameras with better models, but I've been dragging my feet because I know the $150+ replacements won't be significantly better, at least for my purposes. My reasons for doing so will be to standardize on 'supported' cameras where I can update the firmware readily, and hopefully they will all work with the same plugin or SmartPSS across the board so I don't have any oddities like that.

I'd love to see someone update the hacked Chinese firmware to a newer version, but it sounds like it's either difficult or not worth the effort and I don't have the time or patience right now to look into doing it myself. It sounds like circumventing the signing on the newer firmware versions is beyond my skill level anyway. At some point you have to figure, if I spend 20 man-hours trying to hack this firmware, is my time worth the cost savings of using the inferior hardware? I could just buy the better cameras and save my time.

 

[M Imran Khan]

I have 4 of them, well two 4431c and two 4433c, I'm slowly replacing them with IPC-HFW4231T-ASE from Empire as I wanted better nighttime performance and a high frame rate. Totally worth the extra cost to have starlight and double the fps. Also I find the 4431c and 4433c can be slow to respond and I keep having to disable the audio as the hacked software doesn't like to keep this setting for some reason.

Does your IPC-HFW4231T listen to audio? Mine seems faulty as i can see audio options in NVR for it behaves like a deaf. Empire are saying that it does not have audio feature and they are not honoring warranty.
Its mentioned in the specs though.

 

[fenderman]

Does your IPC-HFW4231T listen to audio? Mine seems faulty as i can see audio options in NVR for it behaves like a deaf. Empire are saying that it does not have audio feature and they are not honoring warranty.
Its mentioned in the specs though.

There is no warranty to honor, nothing is wrong with the camera you MUST connect a powered mic to the bullet is as the specs indicate. This is user error. No need to post this misinformation in multiple locations on the forum.

 

[M Imran Khan]

There is no warranty to honor, nothing is wrong with the camera you MUST connect a powered mic to the bullet is as the specs indicate. This is user error. No need to post this misinformation in multiple locations on the forum.

Hey, thanks for your reply.
this is the only place where i have mentioned warranty. since i am not sure if how the audio conpression works i am just 'asking' the owners to guide me. Which i don't think is wrong.

So, a mic is needed to listen from camera? and i need to install a separate deivce for it?

 

[bp2008]

Does your IPC-HFW4231T listen to audio? Mine seems faulty as i can see audio options in NVR for it behaves like a deaf. Empire are saying that it does not have audio feature and they are not honoring warranty.
Its mentioned in the specs though.

It is one of many things camera manufacturers do not represent adequately in spec sheets, so you need to know what to look for. Cameras with a built-in microphone normally say something like "built-in mic" in the description somewhere. This one does not. This one mentions "Audio Interface 1/1 channel In/Out" which means you would need to attach a powered microphone to the audio input jack on the camera's pigtail. Amazon.com: cctv microphone

Please note that most microphone listings do not come with a power supply. They require 12v power, which can be a bit of a complication in a modern PoE setup where you haven't run 12v to your cams.

 

[fenderman]

Hey, thanks for your reply.
this is the only place where i have mentioned warranty. since i am not sure if how the audio conpression works i am just 'asking' the owners to guide me. Which i don't think is wrong.

So, a mic is needed to listen from camera? and i need to install a separate deivce for it?

The point is you posted misinformation. He didnt refuse to honor anything, this is user error on your part. SOME cameras have a built in mic SOME cameras have audio in/out. Some have both some have none. YOURS as per the SPEC sheet ONLY has audio/in out.

 

[bp2008]

On the bright side, a separate microphone can easily beat one that is built in to a camera. This one is fairly popular, if a bit pricey: http://amzn.com/B00M5P7HCW I have one myself and it picks up sound more clearly and from further away than my cams with built-in mics.

 

[ThomasPI]

On the bright side, a separate microphone can easily beat one that is built in to a camera. This one is fairly popular, if a bit pricey:

http://amzn.com/B00M5P7HCW

I have one myself and it picks up sound more clearly and from further away than my cams with built-in mics.

Worth every penny and then some, saved for future use. Thanks!