Customer Reviews

Avermedia Digital Video Surveillance System NV3000

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The card is as easy to install as any other. I run it under XP Pro on an old AMD AthlonXP and everything works just fine. The pack-in software is an incredible value--I wasn't expecting something as mature and polished. The software might be worth the purchase price of the card. I replaced a Lorex Time-Lapse VCR with this for less than the cost to repair the Lorex, and haven't looked back. I retain a month's worth of video at better quality than the VCR with no tape-juggling. Also, being able to keep an eye on my house from work with a browser is a very nice upgrade.

If you are looking to build your very first security DVR, this might make a good choice as long as you are willing to accept some rather significant limitations. I have built several DVR security systems using low-end DVR cards, and my review here is based on comparison to similar cards. First, the pros:

- The video signal from this card is better than other cheap cards I have tried (such as the Aposonic). In other words, your cameras with this card will look better with this card than with other cheap cards. I had trouble with too much contrast with other cards - during the day, the shadows were too dark and the sunlight areas were too bright. With this card, I don't have that trouble so much. I also have better stability with night images with this card than others.

- The software seems pretty well put together and has a lot of features for things beyond what this card can support.

Now, the cons:

- By far the biggest problem of this card is the refresh rate. It is advertised as 30 fps. But, you have to read between the lines to realize what that means. That 30fps is split four ways, so the best that you can get on a single channel is 7fps, EVEN IF YOU ONLY HAVE ONE CAMERA CONNECTED TO THE SYSTEM. It is normal for DVR cards to pool their resources such that 30fps is split among the available channels, but with this card you cannot get 30fps on a single camera no matter what. But even more disappointing is that in order to get the 7fps per channel, you have to set it at a resolution of 320X240. This might be OK for....someone....but for most of us dealing with security cameras, that resolution is useless. At that resolution, spending any money on a quality camera is pointless. What if, say, you would like a 740X480 image? Or even a 640X480 image? This card can only do 3 FPS at those settings, and again - even if you are only running one camera! It does NOT depend on the speed of your computer but is an inherent limitation of the card. This is not to say that 3fps is totally useless for some people. In fact, in a lot of surveillance DVR situations, 3fps may be fine. But if you are trying to catch something moving fast (like a car passing by), 3fp just isn't going to cut it.

- There are significant limitations on the hardware. You basically need to stick with older Pentium computers with Intel chipsets. Won't work with VIA chipsets, so most everything that AMD has made is out the window. It will not work with my new Sandy Bridge setup either, so you can't run it on anything too new. The listed hardware that works with this card is mostly quite dated, with the newest chipsets being concurrent with the first generation of Pentium dual cores. You must disable hyperthreading also.

- The software, while having a lot of features, still has its share of bugs and shortcomings. You can't mirror the data another backup drive, but instead you have to schedule backups. There is no way to adjust the noise filtering except for on/off. Other software in this price range lets you do these things. To be fair, this software does other things that the cheaper products do not.

- The website for this product is terrible. If you don't believe me, try this simple test. Go to avermedia's web site, and type in this product name (NV3000) in their search box. I'll save you the trip: it brings back ZERO RESULTS. OK, maybe its a search engine problem. Instead, go through the "products" or "support" links and try to find the product that way. After a half hour of searching around, I still didn't find it. Maybe it is there somewhere, but they sure make it hard to find.


Ultimately I sent the card back. I find it a little frustrating that the true refresh rate is not more clearly stated in the product description. Instead of '30fps' it should be clear under what conditions you will achieve this frame rate. That and the terrible web support made me send it back.

These cards are great for the price. I am running 2 of these and may get a 3rd. I am using Windows 7 64Bit, but the trick is to download the NV5000 drivers from Avermedia's website. Once the card is detected everything else is just plug n play. There are more options than I can use at this point, but my favorite is the ability to view my cameras on my iOS devices using Avermedia's free apps and also being able to view the cameras using Internet explorer on any pc on my network. The only bad part of easily adding cameras is I have become a little addicted.

This is good card for home or small business security. The included software is very easy to use and has a many useful features. These include a very good motion detector with meaningful parameters and masking. The video quality is not bad. You can pick among different compression protocols and choose the quality level. I have this card running 24/7 for months with no problems. Be aware that this card supports 30 FPS total, so with four cameras you will drop to 7.5 FPS. Still, very useful for security. The software is top-notch and easy to use, but also be aware you are committing to use it instead of other s/w because the card only works with the bundled s/w.

I really like the product and it seems like they keep improving the software which is already very robust. I am using it with QSee cameras from a Security DVR package I no longer use. I'm sure there are nicer products, but I was impressed given the price point.

last week this card decided to only display 2 channels out of the 4, it worked well the first couple months, then my cameras started recording "flickers" 8-10 times an hour, then it progressed to not displaying all 4 channels.... as it stands now its running on 2 channels, how much longer who knows.

This is cheap and you get what you pay for.

First, the card and drivers will only work with 32-bit operating systems... The website contradicts itself regarding if it will work with 64-bit versions of Windows 7, but as far as I can tell, it only works with 32-bit versions.

Secondly, the interface and documentation are disgusting and unintuitive. I'm sure with several days of concentration I can get this to do what I want, but so far, not so good...

Third, the "web based" interface only works with Internet Explorer. Good luck if you have a mac.

I really regret this purchase. To make matters worse, the manufacturer's website is broken so I can't even search for some remedies to the numerous problems I'm having.

This card is great. it is easy to install and easy to use. You need a good working knowledge to set up your own security system, and this will be a great base for it. Lots of features in included software such as Motion detection alarms.

I've tried a few different pc cards. I am tech savy, but have had issues with almost all of the cards I've tried. This card runs smoothly on just about any system (I've tried a few different versions of windows) It's not too picky on your hardware either. Basically, you just need to make sure your hardware is good enough to be a recording system. They have a lot of documentation about what kind of hardware has been tested, and I might add that it is far more than the average. This company has gone to great lengths to make sure their product can be used by everyone.

Talking about great lengths, I can't forget to mention the software. #1 thing that I can say is it is written in ENGLISH!!!! big plus if you have tried some of the other software out there. They have almost everything in this package that you would want or need. It's very easy, and has great documentation to make it easy to understand. It's also very easy to set up IP viewing (from other computers) and internet back-ups etc.

I can't say enough about this card and it's software. Whether you are a business or just an individual like me, you will be very pleased with this card... and you can spend the money you saved on descent cameras.

with hundreds of choices in the Video Surveillance card market it is hard to make a choise, especially when most of the cards are made for the highend multi-thousand dollar systems that us regular people cannot afford. i picked this card to replace an old VCR system that was 20+ years old. this card was installed in a 5 year old DELL with a 2.8ghz pentium and 1gb of ramm and it works great. the sofware started the first time and the video capture was right there. the software lets you pick a camera for full screen veiwing and you can rewind while it is still recording and prit a "snap shot" off any camera. for us regular folk this is perfect.