I'd like a Hikvision with 2 way audio that has offers 3+ MP....any recommendations?

nayr

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you could also just try not answering the door to people you dont want to let into your house, put a parcel delivery box outside that dont invite random strangers holding boxes into your property, and getting a dog.

Ive got more automation than you can shake a stick at; I know whats worthless and whats not.. if there's anyone at your door worth talking too; get up and talk to them.. otherwise let em pass while you watch em on video and record what they say... never once had I ever had a need to talk to anyone at my door remotely and nor do you.
 

fenderman

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This forum is waaayy over


This forum is waaayy over selling the dahua starlight !!! Is it a good camera yes! I have 2 of them. However every Single time someone ask for camera recommendations someone has to say dahua starlight. Their are tons of great cameras on the market use them !!
There is NOTHING that comes close to this feature set and image quality. Nothing. Buying a hikvision or other dahua to save 50-75 is simply foolish unless it is used indoors with lots of light...For the OP that wants two way audio, there is no real elegant solution unless you use a third part closed doorbell...there is a thread discussing the doorbird which supports onvif streaming.
 

Tygunn

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1 & 2, you presume someone will always ring door bell? Ive got a doorbell, its a 50/50 chance if the'll drop the package and knock, drop the package, ring the doorbell, or sometimes they just drop the package and dont do anything.. they also wont wait for you to answer your phone, let alone for your garage door opening.

3. If a normal residential house was talking to me through a doorbell intercom; I would automatically assume the house was empty once you hung up knock a few times then kick in the door.

You should tlak to some people who've actually tried to use these things in production; the perfect world you imagine in your head dont exist.. put a fixed camera at your front door recording audio, your wasting your time and using inferior equipment to get a featue thats IS worthless..

just like all the whole home intercoms that were installed in the 90's, and were never used and eventully had to be yanked out and replaced.. its a gimmick for suckers with too much money.
I'm not saying that this is at all a solution 100% of the time.

Okay granted package delivery isn't likely to work.

However if someone knocks on the door in the middle of the night I'd feel much better seeing them and talking to them through an intercom than I would opening the door a crack to talk to them. Besides, if I look and recognize a neighbor then great I can just talk to them in person. And from my own experience, ignoring the door in the middle of the night carries with it the risk that the person on the other side could be casing the joint. Regardless if talking to them face to face would have the same effect, I would prefer to NOT engage in a face to face conversation.

For the case where nobody is home, YOU might just knock and break down the door, but that doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't put enough of a seed in someone else's head that they'd just leave. Not trying for 100% foolproof here.

In any case, not trying to debate the merits, just trying to see if there is a reasonable product or solution out there.
 

nayr

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if someone knocks on the door in the middle of the night and your unwilling to open the door; what gain do you have over a fixed camera monitoring the same situation? if there screaming for help and hurt real badly you'll see on the camera and hear the audio and cal call the cops w/out ever needing to say anything.. last thing I'd do is answer the door in the middle of the night, I'd grab my gun, fire up the cameras, grab my phone and watch.. still thats a whole lot of money for a scenerio that has almost no chance of ever happening.

Or more than likely the'll hear a dog barking or some background noise that dont match the background noise from your phone and kick off the spark that this 'nest camera' they been seeing all over the fucking news means the house is empty.. If you dont have VoIP there is a several second delay; like news anchors trying to conversate over a satellite link its painfully obvious to everyone this is not a local connection.

there is nothing I would remotely consider reasonable for this; if you continue to soldier on you'll end up with really shitty camera that has a VoIP feature you use a couple times a year if your lucky because the whole universe lined up.. or you could take our advice and just put up a really ID capable front door camera w/a microphone and have some real security while you wait for technology to catch up with your scifi.
 

Ryan00

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Just staying it gets old reading starlight every other post. With all the great minds we have on this forum no one can make one other recommendation? I don't even care if they stay dahua starlight then 2 other options,but at least give some other options. I don't even see why the new people ask for recommendations on this forum anymore you can read that last 5 post and see dahua starlight what's the point of asking? Are we in a cult ?
 

fenderman

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Just staying it gets old reading starlight every other post. With all the great minds we have on this forum no one can make one other recommendation? I don't even care if they stay dahua starlight then 2 other options,but at least give some other options. I don't even see why the new people ask for recommendations on this forum anymore you can read that last 5 post and see dahua starlight what's the point of asking? Are we in a cult ?
Other options are bad advice...you are right, they dont need to ask about other options. This is it, until someone makes a better product...why would someone recommend a camera that is inferior?
 

nayr

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dunno what ur talking about for the several years and thousands up on thousands of 'Whats the best camera?' posts with no answer other than, 'Well that depends greatly'.. and now we have an answer that dont require an interrogation to the 9th degree.

If you want to ask the forums's opinion on whats the camera for me; the answer is now: DAHUA STARLIGHT.. if you dont like that; then go buy some cameras and change our opinions.. because right now at least they are miles ahead of everything outside.

People have asked me recommendations for front door cameras, pet cameras and license plate cameras recently and Ive suggested cameras that were not starlights for those people.. soo, pay a lil attention.. im trying to find people cheap ass license plate reader right now w/custom firmware and its a Chinese 4MP model I'll talk shit on all day long.. but it'll get the job done w/out breaking the bank.
 
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Fruit

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The dahua starlight is so good even dahua US distributors don't seem to carry them (then no one would buy anything else probably)
 

nayr

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us distributers dont know they even exist yet more than likely, they too busy selling 2013 3MP Mini Bullets at $150 a piece to notice; you guys need to realize these are not consumer products with a big ramped up launch day.. they not spending tons of money to prep for a launch day with warehouses full of product ready to keep up with demand.. they build what they have orders for when they have orders for em so they are not sitting on a bunch of empty stock.. when something's in high demand, well then your just gonna have to wait for things to pickup..

the video surveillance industry moves at glacial paces compared to consumer technology.. but thats a good thing, upgrade now and I doubt you'll see anything dramatically better for a good while, this generation gives a good kick in the pants compared to the last several ones, like going from inventing the wheel to the turbo charger.

I suspect at a couple consumer trade shows this year some US Distributers will get there first glances of the Starlights and start realizing they needa start burning old stock fast.
 

hmjgriffon

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us distributers dont know they even exist yet more than likely, they too busy selling 2013 3MP Mini Bullets at $150 a piece to notice; you guys need to realize these are not consumer products with a big ramped up launch day.. they not spending tons of money to prep for a launch day with warehouses full of product ready to keep up with demand.. they build what they have orders for when they have orders for em so they are not sitting on a bunch of empty stock.. when something's in high demand, well then your just gonna have to wait for things to pickup..

the video surveillance industry moves at glacial paces compared to consumer technology.. but thats a good thing, upgrade now and I doubt you'll see anything dramatically better for a good while, this generation gives a good kick in the pants compared to the last several ones, like going from inventing the wheel to the turbo charger.

I suspect at a couple consumer trade shows this year some US Distributers will get there first glances of the Starlights and start realizing they needa start burning old stock fast.
So true and like, is there even any US competition to the Chinese cameras? I never hear about American made surveillance cameras. I guess they are all rebranded Chinese stuff at Costco. It would be nice if there were more competition, would drive prices down.
 

tangent

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So true and like, is there even any US competition to the Chinese cameras? I never hear about American made surveillance cameras. I guess they are all rebranded Chinese stuff at Costco. It would be nice if there were more competition, would drive prices down.
very few electronic goods are made in america. many are designed here.

There may be cameras from companies like bosch and avigilon that could best dahua's starlight cameras, they're just going to cost 3-5 times more and as a results few people will review them and homeowners/small businesses aren't likely to consider them. There are companies like interlogix/utc that I think are rebranded hikvision but I think they had a hand in developing custom software.
 

nevian

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This forum is waaayy over


This forum is waaayy over selling the dahua starlight !!! Is it a good camera yes! I have 2 of them. However every Single time someone ask for camera recommendations someone has to say dahua starlight. Their are tons of great cameras on the market use them !!
you say it's good.........but good compared to what? i currently have 4mp hikvision cameras and they also look fantastic at night. what is the benefit of going with Dahua?
 

Ryan00

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you say it's good.........but good compared to what? i currently have 4mp hikvision cameras and they also look fantastic at night. what is the benefit of going with Dahua?

The varifocal lens is a huge benefit.. still way over selling on this forum just, saying someone has to know of a second option . I have the hikvision 4mp to I have been very happy with them even at night.
 

nayr

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your 4MP is only decent in a few small instances; glad your happy with em but I wont recommend 4MP for anything trying to get a human identification at night.

Before the starlights came out this was still the case; it was widely suggested to take a normal 2MP over a normal 4MP because you got so much more detail at nigh despite the loss of pixel density... and then a HIkvision 2MP and a Dahua 2MP and a cheap ass China Market 2MP all performed about the same, still better than 4MP but not enough for any one of them to stand out against the rest..

Right now the Dahua Starlight stands apart; Im quite sure Hikvision will soon release models utilizing the same IMX291 Sony sensor as the Dahua Starlights.. and then you will have more options to pick from than just Dahua.. but even then I wont suggest Hik's because of many other problems I have with HIkvision products on a more fundamental level...

im sure one day the HIk fanboys will rejoice and start recommending em to everyone too and we'll be back to Ford vs Chevy again.. but right now its like Ford hasent released a new car in a decade and Chevy's beating em in every single metric.. even as a ford fan you should to either wait for your dream ford or buy a chevy because buying a ford right now would be a stupid decision.
 

tangent

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more pixels often just means more noise as the pixels on the sensor get smaller... it's basic physics.

Part of the reason the starlight varifocal turret is recommended so much (beyond it's performance) is that it's a fairly idiot proof option. You can tell somebody to buy one and they can make it work well in most situations even if they didn't provide much info.

There are places where less expensive cams aren't an unreasonable choice, but most people would really benefit from having at least 1 or 2 starlights. Eventually we'll see re-branded models in costco and from lts with similar performance, but it will probably be the CVI/TVI models that take off in the us consumer market sadly.
 

Fruit

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If theres a truth in the industry then its will have a copy sooner or later, just like how dahua copied their exir.
more pixels often just means more noise as the pixels on the sensor get smaller... it's basic physics.

Part of the reason the starlight varifocal turret is recommended so much (beyond it's performance) is that it's a fairly idiot proof option. You can tell somebody to buy one and they can make it work well in most situations even if they didn't provide much info.

There are places where less expensive cams aren't an unreasonable choice, but most people would really benefit from having at least 1 or 2 starlights. Eventually we'll see re-branded models in costco and from lts with similar performance, but it will probably be the CVI/TVI models that take off in the us consumer market sadly.
Motorized Turret 2.8-12mm with EXIR is already available in HD TVI for a very low price from Hik....(around $85-100 in US) first one to get the IP starlight hik stuff should be ADI and Tri-Ed though.
 

nevian

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2-way audio is not full duplex; you can talk or you can listen but you cant do both..

You need a VoIP camera to talk to someone at the front door; and honestly.. every single one of em sucks; and this capability is a total gimmick your never gonna use.. so just forget about it.
this isn't a VoIP feature. it's a feature readily available in many home surveillance cameras. it's not a gimmick at all; it's useful for communicating with services that come to your door. i've used it for giving specific instructions when they arrive at the door and i'm not home.
 
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