Replying to myself... just after posting this, I went to the Reolink site and noticed there was a Feb 16, 2017 firmware for the RLC-423. I wonder if that's the "new firmware" that Blue Iris mentioned in the latest release notes.
Anyway, throwing caution to the wind I installed that firmware... Had to reset my presets for the PTZ but oh well.
In the end, it's still working fine, and I noticed that (because it reset things to defaults) the nasty low light noise was actually better than before. I realized it's because when I enable WDR (either the default gain of 1-62 or whatever else I tried) it was just noisy when it's dark and the IR was on. By the way, it's not noisy in the brightly lit areas where the IR hits, it's just in the darker portions outside that cone. I have it mounted about 22 feet up pointed towards my unlit culdesac starting maybe 40 feet out. It lights the driveway and landscaping okay, but it's that dark street that gets noisy without 3D NR (and just slight noise when that's enabled).
One nice thing (although it made little different in operation) is that with the new firmware I could finally enable the Reolink PTZ controls in Blue Iris. Prior to that it worked okay with the ONVIF controls, so really not a big thing, but nice to know.
A few days back when Blue Iris updated to be able to use the RTMP instead of RTSP for the Reolink, I tried that out and it worked fine... still works now, and it worked fine with RTSP previously as I mentioned. If I'd had this newer firmware but the older Blue Iris I wonder if that would have caused problems...
All that aside, looking at nayr's awesome video / screenshot comparisons of the Dahua Starlight models has pretty much convinced me that's the way to go. My unlit street should really put something like that to the test. I used to have a Dahua 4300 bullet in that spot (and still have two of them in other places). Replaced that high corner with the PTZ and it actually does do a better job than that 4300S at night, but now I'm thinking "I can still do better"
And don't even get me started on the couple of old Foscam wifi bullet "bricks" I still have for the less interesting outdoor areas... LOL. When I upgrade, I don't get rid of the old stuff, I just move them to cover the less important places. Do we all do that?