Based solely on reliability and support, is Hikvision a suitable brand for mid to high end residential IP surveillance? How do they compare with Axis? Much appreciate any thoughts.

HIK is a good product and the price is right. They have products to cover nearly all applications.
The only drawback for me is that we cannot buy direct, have to use a disty.

What about control? IP RS-232 Discrete camera & grid selection?

They have relay contact which can be used for integration. IP control also exists through DVRs so I assume it can be done just the same through a control system.

I am in the process of installing a few in my home. I am totally shocked by the quality of these products, both image quality and construction. It is nothing like one thinks of "chinese" products. They also have a huge array of products of every sort.

I would not use their DVR though. The older releases have been attacked using their default password and they have not been that forthcoming to admit that. Hackers have installed secondary accounts in them and changed the primary password requiring lots of pain to undo.

Note that there are a lot of online sellers selling them below your disty cost. And should you go that way and the product is made for china, they will not support it (warranty or tech support).

Why not?

Any product that connects to the internet should have a password set by the installer. Every product comes with a default password, and it's quite possible that all products of a manufacturer have the same default password.


Hackers are people with talent at getting around security. The people who do this hardly deserve the title of hacker! These are dishonest people taking advantage of poor installation security.

What about this is the fault of Hikvision? Every product comes with a default password, and they're usually very simple, like 1111 or 1234.


Thank you for that! Only sad experience would teach someone that this is true. You've been a real help by sharing this.

I explained that. Expanding, after the exploit happened, despite having knowledge of it, they did not notify their US dealers. So all of their installers woke up one day with all the customer machines hijacked and they had to scramble to figure out how to do a hardware password reset.

Proper response to breaches (of any sort) is almost more important than the security of the device.

BTW the new firmware won't allow you to leave the password as the default so that is sorted out.

I've had a few that were hacked.
I used to show the client how to set the password and told them they could change it after I left. They never do.
Each required a trip to reset the DVR and now I automatically change every password myself.

Out of the box, during initial installation, you are forced to create a password and it has criteria such as upper and lower case, numbers, etc.

My main complaint is they don't seem to bave a user friendly dedicated app-I'm talking nonn-tech end user friendly.

Also I don't think they have black cameras.

They do offer some cameras in black now.

I get what you're saying, but this is the sort of complaint that makes manufacturers put signs on hair dryers saying "do not use in tub."




This is not money being taken from someone's credit card or bank account. This is installers who KNOW that knowing a username and password opens a device to you, and they KNOW that all of a particular product have a default username and password.

After some idiot kills himself by dropping the hair dryer in the bathtub, is the manufacturer is supposed to go on a campaign saying "don't drop the hairdryer in the tub," or even "when we said don't use the hairdryer in the tub, we meant for sure don't ever drop it in the tub!" ?


This is even better than changing the hair dryer power cord to a two foot long cord, but it's still making the manufacturer share responsibility for the installer not doing what is just plain sensible.


I think it's more important to figure out why an installer would not automatically change the password. Is it that he doesn't want to tie himself to the system, that is, being the only one who might know the password? Is there some other reason that makes sense?

1. Laziness.
2. Stupidity.
3. Stupid people being lazy.

Many people want to unpack the unit, connect the cameras with some auto discovery tool, walk away with check in hand.

Hikvision is the largest manufacturer of IP cameras in the world, but most of them are for other brands. I think the Hikvision branded vesions have the best performance per dollar of any camera available, but support and configuration ease are a bit lacking. Synology Survielance Station turns them into a pretty user-friendly solution (once cameras are properly configured.) I think the built-in recording to MicroSD Cards (for equipped models) is better than their DVRs, and is a great back-ip recorder if nothing else.

Where can i get a copy of the IP or RS-232 commands for the NVR's? Or an IR driver with discrete commands?

Or does that not exist?