KGuard CA108-H03 8 Camera+8 Channel DVR with Remote Web / Mobile Phone Access (HD Sold Separately)

Pros: Great camera system for the price that you pay it is absolutely clean !

Cons: Im looking to buy some 4 or 5 more sets of cameras like this but am unable since its price went up some $250. totally lame..

Pros: 6 months still working.

Cons: Thermal issues

Other Thoughts: Following up my previous review, I've had this for 6 months and the hard drive failed. When the hard drive fails it shows video but you can't get into the menus or access via web control. (iphone access still works though). I pulled it out, reformatted it on a pc then put it back in and let the dvr reformat. It's going again but I think it's the heat. This thing has no active cooling, minimal venting, and the hard drive gets very hot. I put in a small 40mm fan and cracked the lid open, may have to get the dremel out and put a big fan on the top.

Pros: -Relatively simple set up.
-IE interface simple.
-Relatively small and light
-Cameras (cw20r1b1) work nicely in daylight, ok at night (WITH outdoor lighting)
-Motion detection has good sensitivity levels and simple to user area filter.
-Ability to change all or a few camera settings at once
-multiple user setup/login and individual permissions

Cons: -Can only use IE (no other browser will work)
-Back up is you downloading the videos one at a time
-Need a converter to use outside of the DVR
-When the cameras (cw20r1b1) IR-LEDs are lit and an item iss within a yard or two there is a nasty reflection that looks alot like an eye.
-Cameras (cw20r1b1) will not work well in pitch black.
-DDNS only gives you ONE option
-Email alerts don't always send
-DVR login slow and cumber-sum (no keyboard, drop down letters/numbers)
-Passwords are numbers ONLY
-Cameras (cw20r1b1) have a narrow view

Other Thoughts: -Not the greatest but for a home or small biz it will work nicely.
-LEDs on the front of the case are not THAT bright, but there are a lot of them (every button has one and there are several indicator lights)
-Can easily mess up your monitor settings (size, menu only on VGA or BNC) and there is no simple way (if any) of resetting it back
-Cameras (cw20r1b1) are mid range cameras (19+ blurry images, 7-14 yards they are good, 0-2 yards bad reflection from IR-LEDs)

Pros: Tech support did call me back
Alarm issue was a time zone issue, alarm uses time based on timezone and everything else uses the actual time you set.

Cons: as expected video quality is what you expect from a <$1000 system.

Other Thoughts: The system does everything we need now. I will likely add either an upgraded camera for my main zone or a separate IP camera as the face shots may not be clear enough for identification at all times.

Pros: inexpensive

Cons: poor tech support, a little inconvenient to setup

Other Thoughts: I was able to get the system working in minutes which was great but I am still having issues with the alarm feature. It seems there are 2 clocks, the recording times are all accurate, but when set to alarm, I get alarms during the schedule time when there should be no alarm and the emails come right away but say they are from 13hrs ago. I have emailed and called tech support and had no response. I plan to attack it again soon and figure out this issue. Other then that it is good, it would be nice if you could do all admin functions from the web interface but it does not allow that.

Pros: For the money it's a great deal. It took a while to find a hard drive on their compatibility list, ended up with a 1.5tb Seagate that works great. Night vision is good. Motion detection works great. You can set up a mask for certain areas. You can set it to beep and go full screen on that cam when motion is detected. After getting the port forwarding and whatnot setup I can access from my iPhone and any pc. The web interface gives you access to almost all functions, and is in fact easier to replay specific videos than using the dvr itself. It easy enough to search for just motion video from the interface and see what happened over a long period of time. Aside from a few nagging details I feel much more secure and can check in on the house anytime anywhere. Going from having no dvr system to having one I'd say it is totally worth the money. Also glad I went for 8 cameras instead of 4.

Cons: The web interface requires IE and an activeX control. It doesn't work on any of the computers at work. Not sure if it's the firewall or something else. Web control does not work on just one of my pc's at home (of 5). Installs fine but shows gray boxes where video should be. Tried everything to fix and put a question on CCTV forums. Emailed Kguard support and got no reply. Tried new video drivers, swapped vidcard, reinstalled IE, downgraded IE, still won't work, but it's 1 out of 5 pcs so...
The web interface crashes while replaying recorded video occasionally. The videos download a little slow even on a gigabit lan so you can only view them at about 8x speed unless you wait for them to download fully.
Kinda hard to search video directly from DVR interface. When setting up ports for web server and phone, the DVR has no keyboard and when inputting port numbers it would revert to 65535 after clicking enter. You have to put 0's in front of your number ie for '4000' enter '04000'.

Other Thoughts: Included cables are long and flimsy but work fine. The bnc connector and plug ends require a rather large hole be drilled to pass through, about 3/4" to 11/16" minimum. I purchased baluns here on newegg for 5 of the cameras and used cat6 cable. Works great but you may want to get a cheap surface box to cover the resulting balun/bnc/power plug clump. DVR gets hot so keep in cool ventilated area, I aimed a small fan at mine.
At Kguard website they have some software called 'NVR300' you can download and use instead of web control. DVR has a vga out and 2 bnc video outs.
The mobile phone server uses 1 port and web server uses 2 different ports, so 3 port forwarding rules to setup in your router.

Pros: It was easy to setup and the quality isn't too bad for not being HD

Cons: Customer Support is in Malaysia, international number. Need a 1-800 number with english speaking operators. I'm not opposed to foreign operators as long as they are friendly and easy to understand.
I purchased an external Hitachi 2TB usb HDD. The system doesn't recognize it even though it's supposed to be supported.
It would also be nice if you could save to a network HDD via LAN.
Unfortunately it looks like I will have to purchase an internal SATA drive in order to record and save my data. I'm sure I can make use of the external HD I bought.
*NO ZOOM!

Other Thoughts: If I could do it over again I would buy a different brand that had better tech support and more options. It was a pain to get all 8 cameras wired up through the rafters and I don't want to go through the effort of taking it down and shipping it back.

Pros: Good price for 8 camera system. Easy to setup and good video quality during daylights hours. Installed a 500 Gb hd, giving me 521 hours of recording time. Installed two of these systems in no time, both customers were quite happy.

Cons: Only one channel at a time can be viewed. Camera cables are made of poorly material, one of them broke during installation. I would've prefer video balun and I would buy the Cat5e cable. Poor night vision, understandable, just 12 IR Led's.

Other Thoughts: I like the way the breaks everything down by date, time, hour etc.... so you search the desired channel and it will give you the normal or alarmed recorded files sorted by date, time and so on. I didn't use the provided cables in one of the system: I decided to use passive video balun's and Cat5e cable giving me longer distance with the cameras, excellent...

Overall, I am pleased.

Pros: easy to set up, great deal for the money

Cons: took a while to figure out port forwarding and set it up to watch the cameras remotely, I am not much familiar with cameras but these ones have a narrow viewing range would rather have a wider viewing angle

Other Thoughts: good price not too hard to set up, the manual was ok in walking me through network setup

Pros: This was an upgrade for a 4 camera system (bought here) for a customer.
Though the cameras aren't the top of the line, they are more than adequate and the IR LED's really do a good job, better that I expected. This brands better cameras have 2X the # of LED's but even in complete darkness these cameras work OK.
I combined this with a WD Caviar Green 1 TB HDD (bought here) and this provides several days of archive, just what the customer wanted!

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: This KGuard brand is very similar to the NightOwl I had bought previously, except no HDD.
That's OK, I wanted larger anyway.
With a free DYNDNS.com address and auto updating the DYNDNS through a Linksys router, this setup has worked flawlessly over the Internet.