Night Owl B-PODVR-8CM 8 Channel H.264 Level Surveillance Smart DVR Kit

Pros: Good DVR, love that I can view the cameras from my phone. I didn't find the setup that difficult and got it all up and running in one afternoon.

Night Owl support is fairly quick and easy to deal with.

Cons: The cameras are the weak link I have seen in this system. I have had cameras taken out in 2 of about 5 bad storms that have come through.

The very first bad storm that hit after I got the cameras setup took out 3 of the 8. Luckily Night Owl replacement is fairly simple and easy and they got me replacements. I had no more problems for nearly a year then all of the sudden another bad storm takes out another camera. I am in the process of getting that one replaced as well.

Other Thoughts: My suggestion would be buy high quality cameras separate from the DVR and of course HDD separate from DVR is normally cheaper to do as well.

Pros: easy to set up
tech support is very good.
Nice dvr
good motion software
Worth every penny of the $240.00 i paid for 8 cam system no HDD

Cons: cameras not very good but great for what I paid for them
No HDD included.
only see in the dark about 15 feet. Black and white only in dark

Other Thoughts: Cables need to be better quality. But, thin as they are, makes them easy to route out windows and still be able to lock windows.
a better solution would be flat cable out the window and then rg6 cable to camera.
Bought a cam with 70 IR leds and it can see about 120 feet in dark

Pros: great being able to access the camera on the internet... when it works, it is pretty nice, and handy to have. use it as a baby monitor also. Pleasant service so far. They replaced 4 cameras under warranty so far without much hassle. It is really nice to have. The indoor cameras are used constantly and seem to have no problems. My wife and I love being able to check the cameras throughout the day.

Cons: Cameras not weatherproof. Even when placed under eaves, they started to malfunction after bad weather. After a while, they went black. The replacement cameras produced wavy pictures after a while. I am hoping they will let me send them back. The cameras havea fairly narrow field of vision (less than 90 degrees). When you put a camera in a corner, you cannot see more than 1/2 the room.

Other Thoughts: If it were not for their service, which I guess is no more than what I _should_ expected, I would give them 1-2 stars. But since they were nice enough to replace their defective product, I am not THAT unhappy with them.

Pros: good cameras

Cons: poor customer services took over 30 min each both times. we called one time we call we left phone # to call back and got no call back. auto did not work which is the why we got one we did. which was 4bl4gf we asked for help we were told we would have to send back at our cost and would not have the security set up. turned out to be dvr not camera but sending it back before getting new dvr would put us at risk. auto will work on other channel. hope this keeps up.

Pros: Price is it...nothing else!

Cons: I've had nothing but problems with this DVR system. You can read my previous review. Besides all of those issues every time I log into to the unit via mobile phone the hard drive light stops recording and in about 30 seconds the box reboots...every single time. This continues after trying different apps, different hd's in the DVR, different ports...etc. nothing changes...it always reboots. I have spent hours and hours waiting for tech support to answer the calls and talking with them as well. They say it's the first time they have seen this problem. Finally, the agreement to RMA the unit. They requested I do not send my hd, which I thought was a little silly, because then they can't test the whole system that is given me the problem. Anyway, I shipped it without the hard drive. I get an email stating that nothing is wrong with the unit and they have shipped it back to me telling me to format the hd. WHAT! They did this with out every contacted me before shipping it back to me.

Other Thoughts: Basically, my opinion about NightOwl...don't buy it! Buy another brand. I AM ONE VERY UNHAPPY CUSTOMER...TO SAY THE LEAST!!!!!!!!!!!

Pros: Cheap price and no shipping.

Cons: Where do I start. I installed this system at my office and when I connected the first camera to channel 1 on the DVR unit I had to really wiggle the cable/BNC connect a lot to get the image to come in. Finally got that halfway stable. I ran all 8 of my cables and installed my cameras. 6 out of the 8 cameras have mild to heavy fine lines in the video stream. Tech support said it was electrical interference. The included cables are VERY THIN and not shielded. Cables allow for a lot of interference. Picture quality is very poor on most of these cameras, due to this. A video isolator did no good in helping. I purchased a new 2TB hard drive and installed it. The DVR worked fine for a few days and the the unit started rebooting. Call Tech support again...was told to re-format the hd. Did that and is working so far. Remotely logging in via mobile phone works only briefly, if then. Get server not available a lot. So far, I am not very happy with this unit.

Other Thoughts: Will give it more time and try to move cables around and see what happens.

Pros: Works Great

Cons: Kind of a hassle to set up

Other Thoughts: Kind of a hassle to set up but the tech support is great and once you get it going it works like a charm. Also running the camera wires is a pain and the camera resolution is passable. I need a higher resolution camera for face and license plate recognition.

Pros: -

Cons: -

Other Thoughts: If you read the Newegg spec sheet on this item it reads "Supports 1 x 2TB SATA Hard Drive (No Hard Drive)". You are right in that it doesn't specify the size, but every DVR (including all the Nightowls) I have seen take a 3.5" Desktop drive, and I would assume this one does as well.

I find it funny that you asked this question but you set your tech knowledge to "High" >.>

Pros: It states you can do playback but no hard drive (included?)

Cons: Does it take a hard drive? If so, what size (2.5" or 3.5")?

Pros: You get 8 infrared cameras that let you cover the major positions around your home. You can view video, play back recorded video, and even adjust all DVR settings live over the Internet or LAN using the included Netviewer program. Viewing it over LAN (I ran a 50' CAT6 cable from my router to the DVR) makes it convenient to mount the DVR in a central position in the house so that the 60 feet of cable for each camera will be sufficient in most cases. The email notifications really work; you get an attached photo from whichever camera detected motion. The iPhone/iPad Ap really works - within its limitations.

Cons: The cameras have a very narrow field of view and require placing the camera farther back than you might think to cover large areas. By placing further back, it may negate the illumination at night by infrared. The cameras use infrared 24/7. This causes typical color shade reversing where dark objects appear lighter and light objects appear darker than they really are - even in daylight. The motion sensors easily capture anything moving such as: shadows of trees on a sunny, windy day (even when the tree itself is not in the camera's FOV), spider webs glowing in the infrared light being pushed by the wind, and the smallest of moths flying across camera's FOV (even with that channel's sensitivity set to lowest setting). The iPhone Ap does not let you view recorded video - only live video from your various cameras. You can capture stills from the video feed, however, which are placed in your photos folder.

Other Thoughts: It took me - all by myself - about 12 hours to install 8 cameras, run all the cables, adjust camera angles, and remotely locate the DVR in a central position of the house. I live in Florida and made sure to only go crawling through my attic in the early morning hours since by midday it reaches 130+ F up there. I have never installed anything like this before, but I am a real fix-it guy that can install most things computer related. I got the LAN settings to work easily so that I was able to make adjustments from my computer, which was about 40 feet and two rooms away from where I mounted the DVR. However, I had to call their tech support to help get the router set to allow viewing over the Internet. They had to create settings to allow port forwarding, which was too difficult for me. Even with all the limitations of the system listed, I like it! Considering what a great deal I got on it, it sure beats $30 per month for a monitored alarm system. I can remotely login from work and check