Dvrs With Bite

AS the DVR market matures there are fewer digital video recorders being released and those that are hitting the market have stronger capabilities and a far more polished finish. For a modern DVR the big things are global frame rate, onboard storage capacity and networking power. In the light of these requirements, the Sanyo DSR-5016P and the DSR-5009P triplex multiplexing DVRs hit the ground running. Each has the ability to store 540GB in each of their twin bays – that’s more than one terabyte onboard. The new units employ the JPEG 2000 compression format and have a solid global frame rate of 100 images per second. Supporting this is multiple screen real time monitoring at 50 images per second, per channel. JPEG2000 is a new and improved wavelet-based image compression method that replaces both JPEG and JBIG. With so much talk about MPEG-4, JPEG2000 has been ignored more than it should have been. The fact is JPEG2000 is designed specifically to handle multimedia. The beauty of this compression is that it’s not just designed to cope with the Internet. Things like printing, scanning, mobile applications and still photography, were all part of the design brief – things that are integral to the broader CCTV application. Other features of JPEG2000 include superior low bit-rate performance, continuous tone and bi-level compression, lossless and lossy compression, progressive transmission by pixel accuracy and resolution, random codestream access and processing, robustness to bit errors, open architecture and sequential build-up capability – that’s real time coding. System features Sanyo’s product is designed to do the important things right and the company now has significant experience in making sure users get the benefit of vital system capabilities. This fundamental strength translates to plenty of flexibility in recording capability with static ROI recording, as well as channel based record rate and quality settings. There’s also 2 channel audio recording. Opposing these features are search functions designed to exploit the increased capability of those big hard drives. Search functions include alarm log search, alarm search, alarm thumbnail search, T/D search, archive area search and motion detection search. Integral to the motion detector is an 8 x 10 point video sensor and there’s also monitor masking function and a 3x zoom function to make searching easier. The Tigers also incorporate a neat timer function that divides the day into 4 time periods – users can then establish independent settings across each of the 4 time periods. These settings include the important ones: Motion sensor, monitor masking and Display Interval for full screen sequential display. Typical of Sanyo is straightforward search operation that takes advantage of the familiar jog/shuttle function at the recorder. All these functions are protected by a series of 5-level covering things like key-lock, live, playback, in fact all operations are covered by the system’s integral security policy. Sanyo DVR solutions have the networking angle firmly covered and this new Tiger is no exception. Network capability includes video and audio download over a LAN, built-in 100Base-TX Ethernet, and 3-level compression for faster network monitoring. Along with this there’s also support for NTP, PPP and DHCP protocol. Other features include telemetry control, password security lock (with 5 levels), timer function, advanced motion sensor and 720 x 288 resolution. That advanced motion sensor is designed to allow the detection of camera masking on any channel using changes of direction and spraying of the lens with paint or some other masking agent. Tigers also come with tamper detection, alarm notification (including an image) via email, and a pair of digital monitor outputs. Importantly, storage doesn’t end onboard. There’s support for CompactFlash, USB, DVD+R/+RW and CD-R/RW, as well as S-ATA external HDD units to a maximum of 4, and a SCSI RAID array. Images can be stored in any one of 5 different qualities (and file sizes), and there’s a maximum of 5 minutes pre-alarm recording possible. Multiplexer control features include things like position adjustable time/date display, 10-character, one-push clock adjustment, auto daylight savings adjustment, video loss alarm, camera possible assignment on multiple display and programmed recording. The multiplexer also has features like 999999 events and HDD event log, RS-485 terminal for system controller key pad (SSP), an RS-232C terminal for PC control, the 8 x 10 point video sensor, Plus display and individual sensor alarm output. Using the Tiger’s control software you get administration of up to 256 DVRs (including 4096 PTZ cameras), full GUI menu setting and operation and a timer download function. Just like all Sanyo’s product, the Tiger DVR series is well-designed and easy to use. It offers security managers a lot more of everything they want in a DVR solution.