Which is why you have a never ending stream of people bitching about BI performance problems, begging for help improving it, and getting told a mix of "you don't need that" (and are stupid to think you do) and "turn off stuff" (that they may think they need)
I'm a small business user, and I stick with BI because overall it works and it's very reasonably priced. But the performance problems drive me crazy. I'd be a lot happier if I could throw a real GPU at it and have them disappear for a moderately higher electric bill and less hair pulling. My time is valuable too. Oh, and I want clear high FPS because its 2017 not 1995. A $1k system should look like a $1k system. VHS is dead.
Currently have 17 cameras at one restaurant and they are thinking of adding more. 11 of them are outside monitoring the parking lot and dumpster area. Could use a few more inside near the registers and outside the rest rooms. The restaurant is in a high crime area. Lighting the parking lot as bright as day at night, lots of visible cameras, and being known for handing out the footage on request to the cops has cut down on problems. It won't stop the place from being robbed. (again) But we think it helps.
More MP helps when lighting is good and you need to monitor a larger area and don't have the option to use a zoomed in lower resolution camera. Capturing license plates in parking lots for example. Worth noting that all the theoretical MP don't accomplish squat if they're video compressed into oblivion. There's more to an IP camera than just pixel count.
There are 4 registers at the restaurant (it gets busy) Thing is, you need to do more than monitor the cash drawer. You need to capture the area around it including the whole employee/customer interaction. We've had problems with people pretending to "lose" stuff, like credit cards and wallets and provided footage to the police showing that they didn't. We've had customers complain about employees (we record audio as well, signs are posted) and been able to take appropriate action. Or not take action, customers lie sometimes.
As for the constant "you don't need high FPS". That depends on what you're trying to capture. A person slipping, or pretending to slip, on some spilled water and ice happens very fast. You want good footage when you get sued so you either know to settle quickly or fight it every step of the way.
I don't know if you realize it, but your calling an awful lot of people stupid because you're "not sure what mom and pop shop needs". If someone wants to record an empty parking space for months on end at 4K 30FPS the discussion should be "doable, but it will cost X dollars, is it worth it to you" not "you don't need that and are stupid for wanting it".
I look forward to the day the debate over resolution and FPS is about balancing it with storage requirements instead of system load. You'd probably say 3 months of video on the NAS is stupid. But it's come in handy enough to have been worth the cost.
