AVerMedia NV6480EXP 16 x BNC PCI-Express DVR Card AVerMedia NV6480EXP 16 x BNC PCI-Express DVR Card

Pros: Much easier to set up and install than I had expected.
Ability to buy a second card and have them work together to have up to 32 cameras hooked up to one computer.
No additional software required for remote viewing over lan.

Cons: when recording videos with remote viewing, it splits the files into one hour segments instead of making one large file. I have not yet looked for a way to change that.

Other Thoughts: I'm only running 8 cameras on this card right now but will add more later.

I'm not sure how hot it gets as I never tested, but just in case I bought a cheap expansion slot blower to draw warm air away from it.

The $1500 DVR system I built using this card is better than pre-built ones I could find that were over $3000. On top of that, I used a 3u server rack case, so it's smaller than the pre built server rack ones I found.

Pros: Good card for sure, but there is nothing perfect in this world. See below.

Cons: 1. The attachments, actually all screen shots (!), are pretty small and don't even worth to be seriously considered.

2. When you try to lock the computer using WinKey-L it locks, but the app dies and Windows 7 kills it. So customers be aware, you will lose your surveillance as soon as it happens with no warning at all! But I'm not dreamign to leave my desktop without locking it. So here is the trap.

3. We have to disable Windows Protection to let it work and that's the must. Why? Is there any way to avoid that? The software developers had no answer so far.

4. Once started the app occupies the whole screen. I'm using 2 monitors, but it's bound to the first one and there is no way to keep it up on the secondary monitor and keep using the primary for my own needs.

5. And a few more insignificant complaints.

Other Thoughts: The info on the web site is misleading. I contacted AverMedia support twice with different questions and here is what I got. Jay wrote me: "the 6480 is only 160 fps in D1". And I also got the following recommendation from Jay: " well if you just use ONE card on the 6240 you can get 8 channels at real time D1". I also installed their software and to my surprise the screen shots that the ap can send as attachments are only 320x240 and there is no way to increase them! AverMedia support confirmed that to me earlier today.

Pros: Overall features are plentiful. PCI-E 1x slot and stackable to 32 channels in true hybrid. Multi-screen compatible. Watchdog cable for unattended restarts. Free software upgrade for IP cameras and base software. Easy UI and pretty simple to learn.

Cons: Software compression. 42 megapixel limitation per computer system now. Output video and snapshot resolution is 1900x1200, so 5MP camera images are bottlenecked. MPEG4 conversion is dreadfully slow on large video files (AVI is faster, a lot faster). Software features and information is lacking, but this is an Avermedia issue. Version 7.7SP1 has new features, but no documentation on their website.

Other Thoughts: Have two of these cards side by side in the following computer box.

Lian Li PC-A70B Full Tower case
Gigabyte Mobo GA-EP45-UP3P
PC Power PPCT860 860watt PSU
Intel Quad Q9550 Yorky running at stock 2.83GHZ
Corsair Dominator 4GB (4 x 1GB) DDR2 1066 Twin2X2048-8500C5D
EVGA 512-P3-N973-TR 9800GT Video card
Plextor 22X DVD burner PX-850A
1 WD Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKB 500GB OS/Saved Data
5 WD Caviar WD10001FALS 1TB Drives for video footage

If you are going MP IP cameras 3-5 be mindful of the 42MP software limitation. Avermedia support says it is a limitation of the chip on the card itself, but who knows what the real story is. Simple enough to build another computer and run two standalones, or pipe them into a third for their CMS3000 software. Video is off a 5.0MP IQeye 755

Pros: Great software, Programmable outputs/inputs, High net framerate, tv out with camera selection, net streaming.

The software is really easy to use and figure out. the computer displays all cameras at 30fps so everything is super smooth and recording at same rate (640x480). hardware encoding is what makes this card awesome.

when recording 9 cameras at 30 fps h.264 encoding, 640X480 take 85% of AMD X4 630 processor but software works without ANY lag and fills 1.5TB in 6.5 days but allows you multiple storage locations and it manages.

Cons: PRICE. wish it were a bit cheaper.

Other Thoughts: great card, fast setup, still consider it worth the price.

Pros: Awesome Card, Software is the best. Both work very well. Avermedia's site has all the software and updates which is great. The software alone is the reason to buy avermedia DVR products. Newegg had one of the best prices at the time of purchase(not on sale either). Easy to install and configure. Took me about 30 mins to be up and running (although I was already familiar with the software).

Cons: Prices on these cards are way too high. Supply and demand sucks... NO x64bit drivers. For the price of around $1000 I would like to not have to run a 32bit os for the sole reason that the card has no driver. The software seems to work fine in Vista x64, so really we just need a driver. So.. pretty please with sugar on top x64 bit drivers.

Other Thoughts: I bought a $100 card on a very popular auction site (no brand name) and was very disappointed. Sent it back and went with this card. I have a DVR unit at my place of work it works great too. Been using that one for over a year. Be careful with what chipset you have as this card and many others are only compatible with certain ones. I'm running this card on an AMD board (ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe) with vista ultimate x32. CPU (AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2) is taking a large load when this software is running on screen and recording 4 cameras.

Pros: Included software is very flexible and has a lot of features. You can set up network storage, backups and also span across multiple drives without having to create RAID sets and it will overwrite the oldest recordings when it's full. Multiple users can be set up and they can be limited to specific cameras.

Video source can be directly attached, a feed from another DVR, or an IP camera. Descriptions, motion sensitivity, recording schedules, framerates can all be configured on a camera by camera basis.

In addition to the web client, there's also a client for Windows Mobile devices that works very well if you have a cellphone with a decent size screen.

Included Matrix software allows you to pull video from multiple DVR's to a single location (like a command center) for viewing and can be configured for multiple monitors.

The latest software revision allows for much higher resolutions and widescreen displays. We have ours connected to a 28" LCD panel running at 1920 x 1200

Cons: Physically connected cameras can not be rearranged in software. You have to change the connections to rearrange them on the screen.

You cannot "pick and choose" what cameras to display. That is, if you have 32 cameras set to record, you cannot view #1, 11, 21, and 32 in a quad split screen (or any of the predefined layouts.) You can do it with the Matrix software, but there's no playback functionality....it's live view only.

Will not run in a 64bit OS (not sure if that's really a con though.)

Converting video from native format to MPEG can be a bit slow.

Software upgrades require an uninstall and reinstall of the application.

Other Thoughts: We have 3 DVRs, each with 2 of these cards and 4-6TB of storage each. With all of our cameras (32 color on each) set to 15-30 fps at 64x480 on "Smart Recording" we get about a week of recording per TB (approximately 4.5GB per camera per day).

Consider slightly oversizing the power supply. Our first builds were buggy with 550W PS. We changed to 650W and they have been rock-solid stable. With the exception of one extended power outage, two of these systems have been running non-stop for over a year. The third was just put into service but I don't expect any change in the stability.

Our systems are built with ASUS and GigaByte X38 motherboards, have 4GB RAM and Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad processors.

The hard drives in our latest system have been formatted with 64kb blocks. Theoretically this should improve read and write times.

Pros: Very easy to use. I was very skeptical about buying this from reading only 4 reviews but now I'm looking to change all my security systems to this DVR card. The TV Out option is better than most other cards (GeoVision) and to display on the internet is easier than the GeoVision (you only need to open one port on the router so you can view the video remotely (as opposed to many ports on the GeoVision).

Cons: When extracting video to save on a CD or DVD, it takes a while to convert it to mpeg format. I have a pretty good setup Q6600 2 GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM but it still takes like 10- 15 minutes to convert a file that's about 4 minutes. But its not bad enough to drop a star. I've worked a few other standalone DVR systems that although they export the file fast, they do it in a format that is very difficult to convert

Other Thoughts: Who wants to buy my old standalone DVRs?

Pros: I use these all over the place, super stable if you run them on their own box and just let them sit. free upgrades from aver when they are still supported.

Cons: Little advanced for soem people and requires some knowledge, but after you use a few it is really nice

Other Thoughts: Software is the same across all of their NV/MP series and you can use the CM3000 central monitoring station.

Pros: I have not had 1 lockup, slowdown, lost recording, lost channel since I started using this card. By far the best card I have used to-date.

Cons: I don't have one in both of my surveillance machines.

Other Thoughts: We tried the KGuard DVR4X-7134D 16 CH. The system would halt and reboot at least 2 times a day. Then we got an Aposonic card where channels would randomly quit working. Man I am glad we finally have a working system again.

Pros: This card is very stable, I have had it running for several weeks without even a hickup on my intel quad core and asus P5K-E motherboard. It came with a "Watchdog" cable that attaches to the reset pins on the motherboard to automatically reboot the system periodically, but I didn't hook it up and I am glad I didn't. There are lots of options to tweak recording settings and schedules. I like the PCIe 1x interface.

Cons: The graphical interface on the software looks lame, and it takes a little while to get used to, but it works. The active-x internet remote client does not appear to work with Firefox. The TV out feature is buggy - it seems to hang on the last camera for 15 seconds before rotating through the cameras every 3 seconds, but who uses the TV out anyway.

Other Thoughts: It is nice that you can run 2 cards in your system if you want to expand to 32 cameras.