These 2 Latest Lorex 4k Cams + Ubiquiti (UniFi) 4k Cam?

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ArmoredDragon said:
This kit often goes on sale at $100 off the current price:


The NVR is junk but at $699 + tax the cameras are worth it IMO. That effectively makes these $93.75 each with Phoenix taxes, which are very high, so if you live in a low sales tax area its an even better deal.
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Gotcha. For some reason I kept pulling up the 4 camera setup for $599. That 8 camera setup shows $799+tax for me, although I thought i saw it for $699 a while back.

EDIT: What is bad about the NVR? At a minimum, you can shuck a 2TB HD and get a decent amount of cat 5.
 
Well I shouldn't say junk, but it's nothing to write home about. I guess it's standard fare for a chinese GUI, but its usability is crap, you literally have to use the mouse for everything (the hardware seems to support a keyboard, but the GUI doesn't) which means doing a lot of things that are easy to do (like type in a password or a camera name) become a chore, and the alternative web interface needs stupid internet explorer (really, why are we building web pages that only work with internet explorer in 2020? I swear Chinese OEMs ALWAYS do the bare minimum when it comes to software, though they do make decent hardware.) Even then, regardless of what browser you use, it's still broken in many ways.

Though to be honest, I've yet to see any security VMS of any variety that has a user interface that actually makes sense, even Blue Iris is guilty of this. Oddly, Blue Iris has figured out how to make the software actually work the way its intended to work, but the Chinese OEMs have figured out how to organize the settings in a way that is more intuitive (though it's still bad.)
 
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FYI, turning on the super codec (not sure what it even is) disables all of the people/vehicle detection features and leaves you with regular motion detection. Whatever it does, it's not worth losing those features IMO. Was pulling my hair out over this earlier because I couldn't figure out why the IVS menu had disappeared when I just saw it yesterday.

Also, the NVR included in the aformentioned Costco kit doesn't enable you to control the more advanced detection features, like setting an alarm when a person is spotted, controlling individual detection zones by time, etc. You have to manually log in to each camera individually to set all of that.
 
ArmoredDragon said:
FYI, turning on the super codec (not sure what it even is) disables all of the people/vehicle detection features and leaves you with regular motion detection. Whatever it does, it's not worth losing those features IMO. Was pulling my hair out over this earlier because I couldn't figure out why the IVS menu had disappeared when I just saw it yesterday.

Also, the NVR included in the aformentioned Costco kit doesn't enable you to control the more advanced detection features, like setting an alarm when a person is spotted, controlling individual detection zones by time, etc. You have to manually log in to each camera individually to set all of that.
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Use smart or + codecs does this on most dahua/hik cameras because they dont have the processing power for both. Furthermore, you would have issues with blue iris because of these codecs use a dynamic iframe interval.
 
I haven't settled on a VMS yet, haven't been happy with any of them. Right now I'm letting this NVR do the recording.
 
ArmoredDragon said:
I haven't settled on a VMS yet, haven't been happy with any of them. Right now I'm letting this NVR do the recording.
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This may be an issue for other vms as well. If you are happy with the NVR keep using it. They are crap. If you are not happy with any vms you tried, you are being unreasonable.
 
I wouldn't say I'm happy with the NVR, it just does the minimum. That, and I'm starting to see the ugly side of the people detection, it's been getting false positives when a dog wanders in my yard, even detecting the dog as a vehicle sometimes, and so far this has happened only once within the last 72 hours, but it detected a moth as a person on one of the cameras.
 
ArmoredDragon said:
I wouldn't say I'm happy with the NVR, it just does the minimum. That, and I'm starting to see the ugly side of the people detection, it's been getting false positives when a dog wanders in my yard, even detecting the dog as a vehicle sometimes, and so far this has happened only once within the last 72 hours, but it detected a moth as a person on one of the cameras.
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There are different quality of AI in the same brand and across brands. For example dahua has analytics+ which is much better than their basic AI.
 
@ArmoredDragon thanks for sharing a lot of your insights spent configuring this kit. I also found the included NVR somewhat acceptable(including Lorex Home app), but inability to do remote live-view on a computer made me start looking for alternative software NVR solutions: 8 of Costco's Lorex E891AB and Synology Surveillance Station(and licenses) OR a windows pc + BlueIris
Would you mind sharing which codecs(H264 vs H265) and which resolutions/FPS rates did you elect for your streaming, etc
 
I just put all of them at 4k with h.265 and 15fps with VBR. Probably should do a bit more adjustment but I have had to put this on the back burner
 
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