The future cost?
Whatever they want, they change their terms at will.

So much of this tech is still owned by the vendor, new terms, loss of features, fees, just an update away. Don’t like it, but another one, owned by another big tech firm.

A dual WAN-capable router will automatically “failover” to an alternate internet connection (cell, rural RF, whatever) if one should go down. Definitely the way to go if reliability of internet access is paramount.

I always cringe when people say this ignorance.

Yes! Yes they very much can and sometimes do. For everything you do on a daily basis, I can assure you there is some law that they can use on you, if they really wanted to make the effort. There are hundreds of these laws on the books that are dirty and many outright unconstitutional.
And no, I am not going to post links. Do the research because there are WAY to many examples and information about it out there. And no, not from internet chat rooms but from law universities and legal aids.

And maybe you don't mind the audio file of you & your wife screwing in the bedroom, being listen to by dozens of 3rd party contractors that they share that with.
Or video of your kids outside playing in the yard, showing up on child porn sites with deranged people wacking off to it.

Is there always someone home? Some criminals could find out what homes are empty during the day and easy targets without putting much effort into it. Meaning more try it. An alert on your phone isn't going to stop a snatch & grab, when they know no one is there to stop them. Or maybe they get bold because they think no one is home and after breaking in, find someone is? How is that going to turn out - statistically not well for the victims.

Going to arm yourself in your home? Well, the police already know you are armed then. Removes that doubt that someone was armed and possibly dangerous when they do that welfare check. "Police have investigated themselves and found no fault for the shooting of the entire family".

Do we really want to go down this deep rabbit hole of how negatively ultimate surveillance can screw you, if you don't give a crap about your own privacy?

A bit over the top. A simple Ring doorbell and a few perimeter Ring POE cameras are simple, inexpensive and mostly in public viewing areas. Drones can hover over my backyard and I’m not allowed to shoot them down so privacy outside the walls of our homes is fairly non-existent if you really look at it. I’m not disagreeing that it’s aggravating and disturbing but privacy as we knew it has changed. Not for the better but closing off the technology that Ring and Google offers might not be the best idea also.

Paranoia much? Maybe if you want to do illegal things, then turn off all of your electronics.
If you think that videos of kids playing in the back yard are ending up on kiddie-porn sites from hacked cams, you need to turn off the computer and go outside and get some fresh air.
If someone wants to get off from the audio file of me and my wife having sex, more power to them. However, they probably never heard of this place called PornHub. It has a lot more offerings that are way better to choose from.

Personally, I don't care if some bored NSA agent is monitoring my stuff, he's not going to find anything, just like with with every other Average Joes out there.

Hey, here's one for you: The NSA actually owns the entire tinfoil industry, that's how they pay for many of their secret off-book operations. It has to be true, I heard Alax Jones and Joe Rogan talking about it.

lol cassimore side kick...much

I'm actually looking into using a router with a SIM card slot- some friends sold their house and bought an RV to use until their new place has been built and to drive to Florida, then take their boat to the Bahamas- they traveled on the boat to FL, hauled the boat out while they're here and will store the RV inside of the marina grounds when they're in the Bahamas. Because they won't be directly connected to the internet while here, they need something that can be independent and while I had checked into Cradlepoint and a couple of other brands in the past, it has been a few years and some others have entered this part of the market and I assume that's because so many people bought boats & RVs during COVID. If they can't travel by commercial carriers, they're using something more private and they still want their internet.

I found a Netgear modem with SIM and WAN, will do around 150Mbps and it's price is less than 20% of the Cradlepoint, plus the Cradlepoint carrier cost is higher, so their plan would to be: buy a SIM card from their cell phone carrier and use the Netgear in the RV, so they'll have connection wherever their carrier can provide decent signal. Once I found this, I started thinking that if I were to go this way and use a SIM card from my cell carrier, I could save almost half of the cost of using Spectrum and even if the speed isn't as high, it might be fast enough for most of what I do.

I can easily connect a larger battery to the UPS and could always install a solar panel for 'worst case scenarios' to cover the power going down for an extended period. The cost of solar panels and the associated electronics is dropping, so it wouldn't break the bank.

Somewhat funny story about fallback ports-

One of my clients is married to a metallurgical engineer who said that he likes to build computers and is the webmaster at the company where he works. I did a house for her in 2003 and when she bought a different house, I did the low voltage work there, too- this was before he ever entered the picture and he has a pattern of thinking that a problem exists where there is none. He didn't like the last remote control, so he broke it- she's not a technical wizard, yet she had no problems with it. He couldn't get the Master BR system to work, so he pushed just about every button possible while he was freaking out and I received a text from her, saying that she "had to talk him off of the ledge". Late in 2019, he bought a Ubiquity AP and couldn't get it set up, so I went there and told him to download their dashboard and he finally got that to work. Not long after, he went out and bought an ASUS gaming router and immediately had no WiFi in any area other than where they could connect directly to the ASUS- I had wired the rest of the house (which is very large) and installed APs in a few locations with a 24 port switch in the basement that connected directly to the router in the 2nd Floor office so they'd have internet even if the switch failed. He had decided that a mouse chewed through a cable in a wall, most likely in the Master BR, so I went there to look at it. He was being a pest, so I said I would go back the next day (I have the code to get in when they aren't there) and that night, I looked into that model of router to get some info. The first photo of the back shows a fallback port and I had my 'AhHa' moment. I went there and sure enough, he had plugged the cable that's supposed to be in a LAN port into the fallback. We talked later and when I said the cable was in the wrong port, she just said "Typical".

I saw that both have taken Ivermectin for COVID, too. Rogan said he used "the kitchen sink method" for it, too- he must have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express or slept with a doctor, so now, he's a medical expert.

There may be laws in the books that are wrong, but they don't have anything to do with me having a Nest Camera viewing my driveway or at my front door.

No one is wasting their time listening to my wife and I, probably because they are far more interested in what you have to say. Google and Amazon are far more interested in picking up on keywords so they can direct better adverts to me through social media, that is how they became so rich, and will continue to make truck loads of money every day. Don't know about you, but if I had a formula that worked like that I would not screw it up by posting peoples sex lives on line.

If you don't have a camera that some creep can hack, he is only going to watch and record your kids at the park or some soccer field with a hidden cam. Sorry, I have a hard time with this one. When ever I have read about some looser getting busted, he was usually a sick family member, or a friend of the family (coach or other)

The Meth head that will likely break into your home did not care about your camera. And if you have things that someone really wants, they will get it regardless of what you use for security.

I know it is different down there, but don't the police know if you have a gun? Don't you have to register it?
The police that justified shooting the whole family probably walked into a house where they were going to win this weeks Darwin award one way or another. Sorry if this was someone you knew, and I am more than aware that the police do have some cleaning house to do everywhere. BUT, cops don't typically show up to a home with the goal of shooting everyone, something went terribly wrong for that to happen.

Ultimate surveillance is already here and has been in some form or another for a very long time. Not a lot of places left to hide.

For a supposed bunch of "Pros", most of you guys are pretty naive. Some of these comments made me think I was on reddit. lol

The company i work for now does traditional IP CAM+NVR systems. We use HIK and now LILIN. I dont see any major pros/cons of one vs the other. We pair that with a Doorbird Doorbell.

My next house will have a combination of the traditional systems and the app based systems. I like the idea of having lots of IP cameras for always on recording while also having the convenience of Ring (or similar) notifying me at entry points (door bells/motion light cams).

Different question. This thread has perfect timing for me personally as I am installing a system but my question is about camera installation.
My home is a bugger to get to the eaves from the attic and the house is brick construction.
Are you guys comfortable with mounting cameras directly to the brick on the side of the house and drilling through the brick for wiring to the inside?

Depends on the type of brick- some is a bitch to drill through, some is crap that wasn't even fired to make it hard and durable (apparently, like the stuff used for my house). The first will make you lose the will to live and the latter crap is porous, fragile and will fracture when the weather turns and everything freezes in the even that water gets into the holes.

What about drilling up into the soffit and using push sticks to get to an area where you can tape cables on?

The other option is using conduit and feeding them into the house/basement- I look at exposed camera cables and call them 'video cameras' because they definitely aren't secure.

Do you have rain gutters/downspouts? I ran cat5 in 1/2 pvc electrical tubing spray painted the same color as the downspout and ran it against the brick and downspout to the ground. (It blends in really well, believe it or not.) I just run the cat5 slightly buried along the house to an enclosed POE switch, then into the house thru along side air conditioner tubes. (It's definately not secure but Blue Iris should at least show them doing it!)

Ring and Nest don't tell you about the tier based monthly subscription required to actually obtain your recordings from their servers when you buy the cameras/doorbells. Last I looked (which was a while ago) I believe 3 days of still images was free, 1 week of recording was $10 and 1 month was $30. This is all PER CAMERA and you know that the price is only going to increase over time.

Doesn't take a math magician to figure out an NVR with a fairly large HDD could be paid for fairly quickly depending on the number of cameras.

For people that are worried about fires, we have had a building go up in flames and even though the recorder was bad the hard drive was fine and we could still pull the footage off of it for the fire marshal to determine the cause (this was a mechanics shop).

If you are worried about theft, than put SD cards in the cameras and have an NVR. If they take the NVR you will still have some footage on the camera SD card.