Should I have gone with Blue Iris instead of NVR?

[buckfast]

Seen as I will use my cell phone to access my IP camera system remotely, I think I have made a mistake in choosing a Dahua NVR instead of a PC server and BlueIRIS. Is there anything I can do to improve things?

 

[nayr]

whats the problem w/gDMSS or iDMSS?

 

[buckfast]

I guess I ask to wrong question. Isn't Blue Iris better?

 

[nayr]

thats largely a matter of opinion..

If you dont mind dealing with windows updates, driver issues, and a bunch of obscure settings that you dont know are causing issues until someone explains them to you.. then you can get better video analytics out of BlueIris and more advanced features.. as long as you disable auto-update and manage all software running on the PC by hand.

if you want to simply record video and play it back and have little need for advanced video analytics and want something that just works, its hard to beat a hardware NVR that operates under 20W loaded.

I tend to favor hardware NVR's, @fenderman will shit on that idea and talk up BlueIris til the cows come home.. I favor KISS, and anything that involves Server Administration is not simple.. and @fenderman favors flexibility and power.. however If you want to mix-match camera brands I'll suggest a PC NVR also

 

[fenderman]

thats largely a matter of opinion..

If you dont mind dealing with windows updates, driver issues, and a bunch of obscure settings that you dont know are causing issues until someone explains them to you.. then you can get better video analytics out of BlueIris and more advanced features.

Everything is explained in the help file, people just dont read. You dont need to update windows if you dont want to and use vpn just like you would have to with the dahua NVR. Its not like dahua NVR's dont have any glitches...the problem is you are stuck if yours does and there is no firmware update...

 

[nayr]

oh the help file tells you what intel driver to install so your BI server stops crashing out of the box? yesh, people really needa start reading that thing.

 

[fenderman]

oh the help file tells you what intel driver to install so your BI server stops crashing out of the box? yesh, people really needa start reading that thing.

Yes, blue iris help file DOES tell you to install the latest driver. Which would solve the issue.
From the Troubleshooting guide:
"I had a crash, how do I report this to the developer?

First, there are several ways that a computer can "crash" ... if your computer stops working either with a complete "freeze" where the cursor doesn't move or you see a "blue screen" error where the entire display turns blue with write writing, this is caused by faulty hardware, a device driver issue, or an OS issue. In these cases it's best to make sure all device driver and OS components are up to date and then do a hardware scan to check for bad memory etc. It's possible to say that Blue Iris may indirectly cause such as error, as it uses your hardware, often under significant load, but in this case the root cause is not Blue Iris."

The driver wasan INTEL issue and only affected specific machines (skylake processors), the fix was easy, install a new driver. I can point you to countless threads where folks have problems with dahua NVR's and still not resolved. You could not pay me enough to use a standalone machine that is reliant on firmware updates that come twice a year and dont resolve issues.
I have 20+ blue iris machines that run butter smooth with ZERO interaction except when I choose to update for new features.
Blue iris also has tons of features and functions not available or easy to implement on an NVR. On a dahua NVR basic stuff like reordering your cameras requires you to delete your cams and re-add them. How insane is that?