Question 1

can these cameras use cat 6 cable in place of the included cat 5e?

Accepted Answer

Short answer: yes.  I tested it for myself earlier.  I wanted to bore a smaller hole than would be required to pass the OEM connector.

FYI, there was very little if any difference in video quality between a short Cat 6 cable and the longest OEM one supplied by Zmodo.

The OEM cables to the cameras are not Cat 5e.  The number of wires in the cable was 4 or maybe 5 -- not 8.

Question 2

Can a hard drive be installed into the control unit for DRV?

Accepted Answer

Yes, I put in a 500GB hard drive myself.  However, the video quality of this unit is average.  If you need better quality, I think you should invest more on a better unit.  In fact, I just submited a request to repair my unit.  It won't power up right before the one year mark.

Question 3

internal hard drive or not? I bought one system last year with the same part number and it does have an internal hard drive.

Can I swap out (myself) the internal drive for a larger one?

Accepted Answer

This set doesn't come with a hard drive so you need to add one yourself.  I tried adding a 2TB drive to mine but had problems formatting it.  I never got it working so I went to a 1TB drive and that has been working well for almost a year now.  It's really easy to install the hard drive and supposed to be able to take any size but again, I couldn't get the formatting to work above 1TB

Question 4

Anyone had this system for 1 year or more? how does that hold up for you? Is it really that weather proof? I see a lot of reviews saying that cameras are going out...

Accepted Answer

The Cameras are weather proof but I wouldn't recommend installing them without some kind of shield from weather, maybe under a little water deflector. The connectors, however, are NOT water or weather proof, I just fried one of my cameras because water got into the RJ45 jack that arrives completely exposed. Zmodo suggests wrapping the connectors in electrical tape or some other type of material to avoid water getting into them. I ran them outside under my little roof edge during minus 0F temperatures and they worked fine, but a tiny bit of water fried one of the camera when it got into the jack.

Question 5

My all 4 camera's are installed inside the home recording thru the clear glass window. I get perfectly good picture all day long but as the night fall, the camera only shows reflection regardless of how much light is outside. Does anyone know how to clear the view in night time to some extent ?

Accepted Answer

The reason for this is that the LED's around the camera lens are turning on due to the low light condition. These are then bouncing off of the inside of the glass and back into the camera lens. There really isn't a solution that I know of. If you could somehow isolate the lens from the led's until it reaches the glass (similar to how it is on the camera itself) then you wouldn't get the glare. However, how much the leds are illuminating the outside remains to be seen.

On another note, be glad you get daytime recording. My unit will not place nice with any HDD I put in it, so no recording for me.

Question 6

Is this a wireless system? 
Can I add cameras?

Accepted Answer

No it is not wireless.  It uses Ethernet that plugs into your network.  The beauty is that it also powers the camera over the Ethernet cable so you don't have to provide AC power to any of them.  It is called PoE (for Power over Ethernet).  Very easy to setup and plug in.

Question 7

wireless?

Accepted Answer

The unit is not wireless. The cameras do require a single network cable but the unit does supply power over the Ethernet cable as well so you don't need to run power to each camera. The base unit has a Ethernet port that would plug into your switch or router network port. 
Quality on the images is really pretty good for the $$$.

Question 8

I want to order the unit and hard drive separately and install the hard drive myself.  Are the SATA and power cables already included with the unit or will I also need to order one or both of these cables?

Accepted Answer

You need just the drive, no extra cables. But becarefull, not all drives will work. I installed 2tb WD eurs drive without the problem but the blue WD 750 did not format.

Question 9

how many hours will it record or do I need to hook to a laptop to record ?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the hard drive installed, the video recording quality you choose, and how you choose to record video.  So you can have it record 24/7, or tell it to record only when motion is detected.  You can have it record at max resolution and frames per second to record, or minimal.  These choices will make a significant difference.

I have all 4 cams to record only on motion, on high quality, and after 6 months, it's about to flip and start rerecording data on my hard drive.  I installed a 2 TB WD Purple drive.  
Hope that helps

Question 10

Hi - are the camera housings plastic or metal?

Accepted Answer

Purchased this item a few months ago. They appear to be metal. They are very durable and well put together.

Questions & Answers