Swann 8 Channel 960H Security System with 1TB Hard Drive, 8 700TVL Cameras, and 82′ Night Vision SWDVK-834508-CL

What customers say about Swann 8 Channel 960H Security System with 1TB Hard Drive, 8 700TVL Cameras, and 82′ Night Vision SWDVK-834508-CL?

1. 25 of 26 people found the following review helpful

   
   Decent system with a lot of pesky but manageable instalation issues & WAY longer instalation time than anticipated., January 15, 2015

   By 

   Amazon Customer (Texas) –

   This review is from: Swann 8 Channel 960H Security System with 1TB Hard Drive, 8 700TVL Cameras, and 82′ Night Vision SWDVK-834508-CL (Electronics)

   First of all, this is a decent system for the price. Bought mine at Costco with 6 cameras for $399. I have worked very methodically and diligently on the instillation for several days, and I would first of all advise any potential buyer of this: these systems are not a quick and simple installation by ANY means. I am quite handy, have built our own 3,000 sq. ft. house, and have a fully equipped shop with every tool you can reckon of, and I will have a excellent dozen hours in this installation when completed. Not Swann’s fault by any means, but don’t expect to be able to do a professional job in an afternoon. I had to drill through masonry walls six times, and went through 4 packs of cable clips in running over 400 ft. of cable, to give you some thought of what is involved. I am also on my fourth call to Swann, which will average about 30 minutes of waiting on hold per call. (That costs them a star.) Calls go to the Philippines, which is OK, but not the same as calling the US for help. Getting the dedicated monitor to talk to the DVR was not simple. Turns out a small monitor (19 inch) won’t work. Would’a been nice if that was mentioned somewhere. Also turns out a streetlight can ruin the night vision of a camera. Again, would’a been nice to know. The system is 8 channel (accommodates 8 cameras) but only comes with power sources for 6 cameras. How much more would two 4-way splitters cost versus a 4 way & a 2 way? The phone ap has thus far been a total bust on my phone and tablet. It scanned the bar code, but would not connect. Here goes one more call to Manila. Connecting the video cables to the DVR is a BEAR for the close proximity of the connections one to another. Very poor design. The Swann View software is OK, but there are a lot of features that don’t do anything, and maybe they aren’t suppose to on this system, but once again the manual doesn’t have enough information to know. Also, the cables seem to be wound the incorrect way on the spools, adding an annoying extra step. The shade hood on the cameras are not well designed and do not seem to be snug no matter how you adjust them. My conclusion: decent system, excellent resolution, acceptable night vision, but realistically expect to take several times the length of time you would expect or have read it will take to achieve a proper and decent installation.

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2. 22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

   
   Upper middle-class system., December 21, 2014

   By 

   Julius Pepperwood –

   Verified Buy(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Swann 8 Channel 960H Security System with 1TB Hard Drive, 8 700TVL Cameras, and 82′ Night Vision SWDVK-834508-CL (Electronics)

   Things that are excellent about this system:

   – Simple to set up. I’m not very tech-savvy, and it looked a bit complicated when I opened the box, but there’s a very straightforward step-by-step card included (there aren’t that many steps) that shows you how to set up the DVR. My best advice on the setup is to set up the DVR with a TV somewhere where you can practice connecting the cameras and check if they all work before you even try to place them where you want them. Lay it all out on your living room floor or something. Get the hang of doing one, and it’s simple enough to repeat that 7 more times.

   The DVR settings require a bit of exploring the menus and figuring things out on your own to get them just the way you want them, and to figure out how to search for video clips recorded due to motion detection, etc. (that’s the “search” menu, btw, and “backup” is how you save a clip to a thumb drive to get it off the DVR if need be). When you first set the DVR up, if you can’t see the icons at the bottom of the screen when you right-click the mouse (included), then your screen resolution is not right. The book talks about icons at the bottom of the screen to access the setup menus, and initially I thought my DVR wasn’t working right because I could not see the icons and the camera feeds on the screen made it look like the resolution was ok; they were just being cut off and were “below” the bottom of my screen.

   I like the motion detection features. When you’re viewing a feed full-screen, you can select the area that you want the camera to detect motion in and unselect where you don’t want it to. For instance, I had to unselect some areas with trees that blow around all the time, triggering the motion detection (which generates an email with a picture of what triggered it). You can also adjust the sensitivity to try and reduce fake positives, where, say, you want it to trigger on a human-sized object moving and not every bird that flies by. This feature works ok, but it’s not perfect. It rains a lot where I live, and if I want the cameras to be sensitive enough to pick up a person 20 feet a way, that means I get dozens of emails a day (as a single conversation ever few hours, usually), with pictures of rain (especially after dark). It is what it is. When I walk in my front door, I get an email to my phone within 30 seconds showing me a picture of myself on the front porch.

   – Cameras:
   I’m not terribly pleased with the cameras. I’m not a tech guy, but I tried to look into what TVL and HD really mean, and I was expecting a lot more crispness and clarity to the cameras than there is. For the resolution to look half decent, you have to view the camera feed in a small box. Full screen, even on a small television, is very pixellated. It probably wouldn’t be enough detail to read a license plate if it weren’t pointed right at the camera and within about 30 feet. Facial detail is poor too, on the camera that I have 10 feet from my front door and pointed right at it.

   But, the cameras seem to be excellent enough to do what I want, which is to be a casual deterrent against property crime, give me situational awareness around my house, and make a record of any people or vehicles that come into my driveway or come up my walk, which it does.

   I reckon the bottom line is that for the price, the cameras should be better. But also for the price, the reviews I’ve read seem better than other similarly-priced systems. And the remote viewing app on my Android phone works pretty nicely. All I had to do to set that up was to download it and scan a QR code that’s on a sticker on top of the DVR.

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3. 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

   
   Excellent system for the price, nice features & excellent quality., May 20, 2015

   By 

   S.A.M. (Kansas) –

   Verified Buy(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Swann 8 Channel 960H Security System with 1TB Hard Drive, 8 700TVL Cameras, and 82′ Night Vision SWDVK-834508-CL (Electronics)

   Exactly what I ordered. Seems to be of excellent quality. No issues with shipping or packaging. I would recommend this item to others. Simple to install. Everything worked. The apps for smartphones run fine, although for me anyway, if you have more than one device connected it seems to not like it. The PC software is not excellent – it works but it crashes 50% of the time on startup but once it crashes, it starts up the next time. The other thing is I can seem to only get streaming to work for 6 hours or less. It will freeze the video & the program must be shut down & restarted to view current feed. The smartphone app doesn’t do that – it runs fine. Only software that seems to work with this is the SwannView Link – The SwannView Pro says it supports the 4000 series but I cannot get it to work, but I don’t see that it is any better or worse than the SwannView Link. Speaking of, all you need to do is let it scan the QR code & off it goes. I didn’t have to configure my routers or anything. Swann provides a DNS service to set your unit to a domain name (ex: yourdvrnamegoeshere.swannviewdvr.net) but I still haven’t figured out the purpose. The pictures from the cameras are excellent. It’s real time with a physical monitor plugged in – which you can hook up a HDMI cable & standard VGA & view both at the same time. I have the HDMI going to my Toshiba LED TV screen & the VGA going to a 24 in Samsung LCD. Resolution might be an issue depending on your screens. The software lags a bit – the picture will be choppy – because it’s going over the Net but it still works. The built in firmware aboard the DVR is simple & straight forward. I didn’t need to study the manual to get it running. Cameras have been fine so far – running about a month now. bugs seem to like the IR though – so at night it seems to attract them. Kind of a pain but it hasn’t hindered my viewing. Included cables all worked fine but I did have to buy longer ones for some of my runs. The only thing that has been an issue is my remote control’s #1 button is not working. I have been emailing support. Advice: Question one question at a time. Be as simple & concise as possible. Hope they send me a replacement. I guess I can follow up on that later.

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