How to choose a DVR card

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By Ryan Temple

Choosing the right DVR Card for a Surveillance System is not easy! You have invested a lot of time and money into your home or business and want to protect those investments. This is no different than buying home, vehicle, or life insurance. It gives you piece of mind.

Building a PC Based Surveillance System yourself or purchasing a preassembled one from a reliable vendor can get confusing! There are many DVR Cards on the market today and the goal is to find the card that is easy to use, but does not limit your options. Make sure that the Surveillance Vendor will give you at least a 1 year warranty and make sure that they offer technical support (not the manufacturer, but the company themselves). There are too many companies that repackage an item and ship it to you without having any technical expertise.

If you plan to purchase a DVR Card alone and build your own system, make sure it is a dedicated system, just for your Surveillance System. Any additional programs and software added to this system, the more likely it is to have problems.

Below are some key features to look for in purchasing a DVR Card. The right card can make the difference of catching a criminal and prosecuting them, or finding out your surveillance system did not record the event!

• Stable windows based DVR Card
• User friendly interface
• Browser based remote monitoring of video & audio
• Multi site simultaneous remote video monitoring via client software
• Easy point and click playback of recorded video
• Digital high resolution recordings for up to 16 channels at 240 frames per second simultaneously
• Digital audio recordings for up to 16 cameras simultaneously
• Adjustable recording format and video quality controls
• Adjustable recording resolutions and frame rates
• Remote search & playback via a browser or client software
• Live remote audio monitoring with two way audio communication
• Remote video monitoring via Smart Phones and PDA’s
• Point & click recording schedule setup for each camera individually
• Easily save video events to CD in AVI format
• Pan Tilt Zoom camera support [all major protocols supported]
• Sensor inputs & outputs for alarm component integration
• Four relay outputs for home automation integration
• Easy user management with multi level password protection
• Schedule or manually back-up data to removable storage devices
• Digital watermark technology
• Hardware watchdog

PCSurveillance.net has a systems engineer and multiple technicians available to help answer all of your questions. We specialize in helping clients and individuals design their own PC Based Surveillance System to solve their specific need.

Ryan Temple is the Director of Operations for PCSurveillance.net. PCSurveillance has been serving integrators and manufacturing customized Surveillance Systems throughout the US since 2002. You can read more of Ryan’s articles at http://blog.pcsurveillance.net/

Ryan can be directly contacted at ryan@pcsurveillance.net

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