This is for a family friend that owns a large storage facility. I walked it with him over the weekend, and we're looking at 29 cameras. Of course, the guy wants to do it as inexpensively as possible. There are currently some 12-13 year old analog cameras and a DVR with an output to a 720p LCD TV, and he's totally happy with the picture quality. The drivers of this decision are wanting to have remote viewing, as well as adding additional cameras in some outdoor RV/boat storage space he has started renting out.

Typically I use Luma for surveillance, but they do not make an NVR product beyond 16 channels. I see a lot of recommendations of Synology, and I know a lot of people really like HIKVision. Anybody want to share their opinion of which way to go? I'm currently leaning towards Synology and trying out Hikvision cameras.

Synology will be compatible with any camera that ONVIF compliant or supplies an RTSP stream.

As far as Hik, they’re cheap and do the trick, but I’ve had longevity issues with most of their cameras before, they didn’t last more than a year.

Axis I find to be great quality for just a little bit more.

That's interesting. I started using Hik cams on a lot of jobs about 6-7 years ago at least (probably longer). I have not had a single 1 fail yet - not 1.


Now I am working on a job right now that has 12 Hik cams installed from about 4 years ago that some IT guy installed. Customer says about 2 years in, they started to fail. All 12 are dead right now.
Going thru them, not a single one of the cameras had the white weather proof shell installed on the network lines. So all 12 had RJ45 getting rained on and into the connector, shorting out the cameras. OH, and he was using a passive POE injector (you know, the kind with a big power supply and just pushes out the power no matter what is attached or what is shorted). There was evidence one of the water shorted connectors had caught fire and started to burn the trim on the house. Damn lucky it seem to put itself out.
Had no problem telling the customer what a complete dumb a** idiot the IT guy was and had no clue what he was doing - "sorry he took your money". And that he was lucky the idiot didn't burn his house to the ground; because he almost did.

I did 2 stores with LTS TVI systems. LTS has a 32 channel tvi system.

They had somebody go in and install some ip cameras and he did a pretty bad job. I gave them a price for IP and tvi. They wanted to save money so they went with the tvi. The dvr is a hybrid dvr so you can add Ip cameras to it. I added a few fisheye cameras for them.

The systems have been installed a little over 3 years and have been reliable. Some of the cameras would get lines going across them but LTS replaced those.

We use InvidTech for our cost effective solutions. Their Paramont line is really good and provides a lot of camera options and is a Uniview OEM. Unlike Hik and Dahua, Uniview isn't black listed by the US government. My understanding is if you ever got the the opportunity to install cameras for any type of government project and they found out you are/have installed Hik/Dahua you will never be awarded work (I am not in the US so haven't looked that closely into these stipulations).

If wanting something a bit better quality that isn't an OEM I would look into Hanwha. They have many options and don't OEM to anyone. You will be paying more per device (when comparing to Hik, Dahua, Uniview) but are guaranteed to get the quality.

Lastly to go all out as someone else mentioned Axis is your top level. There are others as well but Axis is the more known brand.

The pricing structure for the above 3 is as follows:
Hik/Dahua/Uniview or any of their OEM brands as cost effective, they work but quality may be on the lower side but you are getting a camera for a good price

Hanwha, you are getting a better quality, more options for indoor vs outdoor they don't OEM, their pricing is 1.5-2x more than the OEM brands

Axis, top quality, don't OEM, but 1.5-2x more than Hanwha, 3-4x more than OEM.

I have priced systems out using all 3 brands and similar cameras and the price differences above are fairly accurate.

Location for me has a lot to do with it. Colder winters in New England kill anything that doesn’t have built-in heaters or enclosures. You know, because they don’t want to pay for it. Most decide to just replace when needed. Plus, I also find Hik to be a bit quirky for some things.

Axis does have a budget line and have used them indoors only though. Not much more than others.