Digital Camera and SD Recorder Receiver
2.7
5
2
3
Poor resolution and colour
The good stuff -
Compact receiver unit, easy to set up, wireless works great, motion detection is excellent, storage on memory cards sure better then vcr or dvd's!
The bad stuff -
HORRIBLE resolution! Looks awful on a TV set, somewhat better on computer. We have HDTV, there's no excuse for such poor resolution in this day and age.
Colour camera? What colour? There's only the faintest pastel hint of maybe a blue sky. Trees and shrubs come out white! To call this a colour camera is laughable.
Motion recordings are jerky. The sound has an annoying background noise.
I regret having purchased this system, and wouldn't recommend it. No excuse for such poor video performance with today's technology.
June 17, 2011
Pretty good - should do the job
Set-up was easy but you must plug in to your TV or your computer's video card with the (yellow) RCA jack. You don't need to stay connected to your TV or computer for normal operation (just for set-up). You can view your captured images (which are all videos - you can choose how long in the set-up) by connecting to your TV or computer, or you can take the Secure Digital card out of the unit and plug it into your TV (if equipped) or computer to view the images (all stored in a basic file system as AVI files).
Digital picture quality is good, even in no light conditions (the camera emits a low-frequency red light which can't be seen, but to the camera it looks like the lights are on and therefore the picture quality is great).
The biggest drawback is that the digital camera is expensive (do not attempt to use the cheaper analog camera - it will not work). You can connect up to 4 cameras to one base unit (the base unit comes with 1 camera). Canadian Tire does put them on sale a few times a year, so keep your eyes open for the deal (it's worth it!).
Consider buying a larger Secure Digital (SD) card. The base unit comes with 2GB, but the unit can accept up to a 32GB SD card. However, you can also have the unit re-write over older captured images when it runs out of space on the SD card (this is configurable in the set-up). But you may lose important video captures if you do this without frequent back-up of the smaller capacity SD card (like, if you go on vacation).
June 3, 2011