vivotek IP8362 and Arecont AV1325

[bitl3ss]

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience or comments about the IP8362 camera or Arecont AV1325.

I am switching over from cctv and am trying to stay around $500 for my first camera. At $700 this a little over and the Axis cameras although nice are about $1000 which is to much.

I also want to make sure that the cable passes through the mounting bracket so it is hidden(like the axis or vivotek) which leaves out Acti. Too bad, I liked their cameras accept for the crappy cable management.

The location is my driveway about 50'x30'
I am looking for decent night quality, I have motion floods and would be willing to setup a pir if necessary.

TIA
Dan

[buellwinkle]

Arecont is made in the USA, So Cal actually. They have good image quality, but poor support and mediocre low light capability but they have a midnight mode where they remove the noise and have a really clear picture at night, but at the expense of motion as they use 2-3 second exposures, so you have to stand very still for a few seconds to get facial recognition. I had their 3MP camera, was the only camera I ended up dumping on ebay. They are as close to CCTV in functionality which is close to zero, so don't count on the camera doing much without software to configure it and use it. Contrary to most IP cameras that let you email alerts, ftp images or video and such. Careful when ordering, most of their cameras come without lenses.

Vivotek makes some of the coolest cameras with the best features at good prices. If it wasn't for the poor image quality and poor customer service, they would have a decent camera. Quality varies, they are inconsistent. Another brand from Taiwan you may like is Messoa, again, poor customer service, but much better image quality than Vivotek. Geovision has the best value, a 3MP bullet cam for $500-600 but have not seen any reviews on it since it's new.

If you want better cable management, get an outdoor dome, then the wire is hidden by the dome housing. Both the cameras you mention are over $500.
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[bitl3ss]

thanks for the input, i think I will have to up my budget to the $700 range to get what I am looking for.

I looked a round for GV-VD220D samples but no luck yet, the price is nice though.

[Pete_]

I wasn't too impressed with the geovision software. Tried a web demo of their cameras (decent quality), but couldn't get the software to uninstall itself from my computer, kept throwing errors. Maybe I'm an isolated incident .