in looking back over this thread, i realize i managed to totally hijack it - sometimes my brain switch is stuck in the "off" position - my apologies
in answer to your question, i went totally with hikvision, now have five cameras and will be adding two more inside the house. THe interior cameras will remain disabled when we're in town, but if/when we leave town for a few days, they'll be enabled so i can view the interior of the house remotely.
Of the five cameras, two outside cameras have microphones, with audio out capability as well, and i was able to rig a speaker at each so they're now two way comm capable at both entrances. It sure makes it easier to chase away sales people without having to leave my desk. THe other two exterior cameras are have no audio capability, as the current single interior camera doesn't have audio. The two i plan to add to the interior will be two way audio capable.
My original thought was to wait to see how many cameras i ended up with before deciding on which NVR to go with, but to be frank, i don't think i will go with a NVR. The Trendnet 8 port PoE switch i've running has turned out to be pretty effective.
i installed a single 1TB SSD in the computer dedicated to the surveillance cameras, and currently am seeing 60-66GB daily video storage, so with the current 5 cameras i've got 14+ days storage - with the two i'm planning to add, it will probably drop to 12 days video storage but that's plenty for my needs. I did have to dial down the resolution on a couple of the cameras to help bring down storage consumption.
Total cost, including the $125 Trendnet switch is right now $1443 total, and will probably go to $1700 with the next two cameras.
In weighing whether to go with a NVR, i measured the current draw of my computer; when it's recording from all 5 cameras, with the display in "sleep", it's showing 20-21 watts (backing out 5W per camera. The trendnet is drawing 10W, so that meant my computer, when the display goes to sleep, is only drawing 10-11W. I backed the current the cameras are drawing as they'd be drawing that same current from the NVR (assuming PoE ports). The main point is that whether the trendnet switch is drawing 10 watts, or the NVR is, it's a wash or break even current wise, so i didn't see any reason to drop $300+ on a decent NVR (Hikvision). One thing i think i've learned in reading countless posts, is to try to keep the cameras and NVR from the same mfgr - there seem to be a lot of small issues that show up when you mix & match, and i'm not literate enough to resolve them - at least from the same mfgr, i can lean on their tech support.
The video is recording to the SSD on the computer i use to browse the web, watch movies etc - and occasionally render a video on. But if i'm going to render a video on this computer, which is rare, it's not much effort to turn Blue Iris software off, so no video recording is comsuming cpu resources.
And btw, Blue Iris is the video management software to go with - much much more sensitive motion sensitivity adjustment and much better zone control - one of my cameras can see the street, and i drew the outer most zone border about 3 feet in from the street - have not had one false motion detection notification in 2-3 weeks.
Hikvision's software is decent but the BI software is better, but you do need the hikvision software to adjust the cameras, ie resolution settings, wdr, backlighting, AGC etc. The Hikvision took some head scratching and playing with it to figure it out, but if i can do it at 69 yrs old, and basically a fred flintstone of computer literacy, anyone can. The few times i needed to call Hikvision tech support (4X), time to get thru to them was almost instant, one time had to wait 5 minutes, and 3 of the techs were real helpful, with the 4th being a complete idiot. If you ever call them and get "Patrick", just hang up.
A lot of posts online indicate the Hikvision (and the Dahua) cameras are set to a strange "default" IP address - but i'm not sure they bothered using the SADP tool software that Hikvision supplies - the first thing it does is lets you assign whatever IP address you want.
There is a security concern re Hikvision cameras, see
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-police-military-bases-using-hackable-chinese-government-owned-surveillance-cameras-2614055 they're 42% owned by the chinese gov't. Dahua is even worse. Before buying either i downloaded both Hikvision's and Dahua's configuration software - when i downloaded Dahua's, my emsisoft malware/virus protection went off alarming like there was an invading army coming thru the door. No alarms when i installed the Hikvision software.
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All in all, i'm real happy with the cameras - while i was typing this, amazon delivery dropped a package at the front door - BI software lets me set an alarm to sound thru the computer's speakers so i knew it before the dlvry guy had dropped the package on the stoop - but the point is, they never ring the bell, so you don't know the pkg is here, and we never use the front door. So the cameras were helpful in that regard.
But to state the obvious, most of the reason for the cameras was not to help catch any burglars, etc, but hopefully prevent them from breaking in, in the first place. We had a pretty gruesome home invasion up the street, they broke in in the middle of the night, the homeowner is a batchlor, fairly well off, and they beat the crap out of him to get him to open the safe in his house. He did, then they tied him up, and they were leaving thru the garage when they saw another safe - they untied him and beat the crap out of him again for not telling them about that one. The cops eventually caught the burglars, and it turned out 2 of them had been on the roofing crew replacing his roof.
I've got a slight background in this stuff - most break-ins, 80% of the time, the victim knows or has met the burglars, usually something like a plumber is working on your house, his helper hears your wife on the phone talking about the vacation you're going on or the dinner you're going to, so he knows when you're not going to be home. And that helper's buddy is a druggie, who pays that helper $20 for the info or "tip". You get the idea
This way, with the cameras, visitors have knowledge of the cameras (they're kind of hard to miss) and hopefully will find another target.
And in case, max resolution on all 5 cameras is 2688 x 1520, i've got three of them turned down to 1920x1080, and the microphones on the ones with mikes, are so good, i can hear the mail truck pull up to my mailbox, hear his engine idling and hear the mail man open and then shut the mailbox door like i was standing right there - it's eery, the mailbox is 100-110 feet distance from the camera.
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