Hey, thanks for the link. That looks so much easier than trying to piece together a system. From what I understand, Q-see is Dahua and lorax and swann are hikvisions?
From what I have seen yes, however I think they do funny things with the firmware, not totally sure. Also hassle free depends on how you look at things. I am looking to get in to doing some camera installs for some businesses and I wanted to see what the dedicated DVR boxes are like so I looked up the hikvision ones on youtube. If you only want to do the basics this will probably be best for you, like if you just want to set up all of the cameras to record 24/7 and be able to see them from your phone remotely and never have to touch it again, great. But these boxes are very limited on features, functions, and there really is no expandability or ability to customize or modify anything, it is what it is. If you have spots left for cams you can add more but that's about it. If you want more advanced features, expandability, the ability to mix and match cameras etc. you're really going to want something like
Blue Iris. There are lots of other awesome DVR softwares out there, but they generally cost insane amounts of money and charge you a license fee for every camera on the system. Not trying to sway you just want you to be informed before you plunk down the money because if you're going with 3mp cameras, it's gonna be a nice chunk of money.
