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Hawking HNC800PTZ Pan/Tilt/Zoom Network Camera
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HNC800PTZ Review
Reviewed by
Design: 9.0 / 10
The design of the camera is great. It is light weight, sleek and easy to use.
Image Quality: 8.7 / 10
The image is pretty great compare to some other same price cameras. I mean you cant zoom all the way out and expect to read the warning label on a package but you can make out faces.
Easy of Use: 7.0 / 10
THe camears ease of use varies upon what area you are talking about. The camera has great PTZ controls but when zooming out the Pan and Tilt will only work when you are zoomed to 3x or less. So you have to get the item you want to zoom in on centered before 3x and zoom from there. The software is fairly easy to use but takes some getting used to to set up. When you insatll a new camera you have the ability to add security ids so that only specified users can access the cameras interface. You have to do this with every camera. It s seems that you should only have to do this once and le the software send the securityt to all of the cameras.
Connectivity: 8.0 / 10
Connection was simple once I figured out the the firewall was preventing the DHCP from giving the camera an IP. The Hawking Tech Support had no idea what to do.
Other Features: 6.5 / 10
THe camera has many features Like PTZ, web interface, DHCP and static IP configuration that work great, but there are a few items that really need help. The recording software doesnt record straight to an AVI file. It records to some kind of file that has to be converted to an AVI in order veiw outside the hawking software. THis normally would not be to bad but the Hawking software does not have any fast playback abilities. So unless you have tons of time to go through the recorded video you will want to convert to AVI and watch recordings with another software that has fast playback features. The conversion process is simple to start but it takes about the same time to convert to AVI that it took to record the video. So if you have 8 hours of video, it takes about 8 hours to convert to AVI. You can however skip forward through the video but you never know what you mess by doing that.
Strengths
The design of the camera is great. It is light weight, sleek and easy to use.
Great image Quality
Easy configuration
Weaknesses
Software needs complete rehaul
Does not record to AVI
AVI Conversion process is extremely slow
There is no fast playback mode
Summary
THe HNC800PTZ is a good peice of hardware but the software needs some serious upgrades. If you could find another software package that will work with this camera it would be a great surveillance tool.
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