Customer Reviews

Lorex Edge LH314321C4 Internet Access DVR and 4 Camera Surveillance Bundle

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

 

 

Length:: 6:16 Mins

I will warn you - this review (especially the video portion) will not tell you every detail of the Lorex Edge Security Bundle. However, I will attempt to show you on how the system sets up (from a basic installation) how it works what it looks like on your video monitor.

Notes -

- Pretty good picture - not HD, of course, but it does have good picture for this price point.
- Decent low light capability
- Basic set-up is relatively easy. IF YOU DO NOT plan to integrate the security bundle to network installation will take about an hour - and be accomplished by anyone
- If you are planning to run this through your network you will need some advanced understanding of port forwarding and ways to set-up your router.
- For some reason the bundle does not come with a VGA cable- which is required for use with a monitor.
- Does not have RCA outputs.... the unit only works with a network or through a direct VGA output. I found this to be an odd oversight.
- Comes with a basic remote control and mouse.
- Security bundle is NOT wireless - each camera comes with 60' of cable that must be plugged into the base unit. This is not as big of a disadvantage as it may seem - wireless security packages can be hacked and require each camera to be individually powered.
- Cameras do NOT need to be near a power outlet. The video output cable (That plugs into the back of the base unit) runs next to a power cord, in fact, the cable can ONLY be plugged into an outlet near the base unit.
- Unit can record based on a timer/calendar
- Unit can record based on a motion detector.
- If you watch the video you will see a bird that sticks his beak directly in front of the camera. This is impressive because the camera has a focus and capture zone ranging from 1' to about 100'. This gives you great security coverage!
- All of the mounting hardware is included, this includes wall anchors.

Final Verdict -

While I am sure that I have left out a few of the details I can still say that I am very impressed with the Lorex Security Bundle. This is the perfect set-up for a small business, store, or nature lover.

4 1/2 stars

The other reviews cover the capabilities so I will concentrate on what were the disappointments. The system has many good features and the price was great.

The system setup of the DVR is NOT intuitive. Especially setting the recording quality and frame rate and the schedules for the cameras. Setting the password(s) is a pain due to a tedious interface.

The BIGGEST complaint is the triggering settings for alerting and recording movements. Each camera has zones and sensitivity settings that trigger the alerts and start the recording. The problem is if you point the cameras outside, or mount it outside it is virtually impossible to not have it trigger every time the sun changes, due to a cloud going by, there is rain or any small critter such as a spider, or bug crawling by. You will spend 99% of your time deleting the useless clips. (Really needs a "delete all" function)

For $500 it is worth the money, but don't count on using the recording/alerts outside or looking outside.

The Lorex Edge LH314321C4 is a nicely packaged system with four cameras and a DVR with a 320GB HDD which fulfills the general needs of a home-based video security system. Based on a Linux OS with a USB connector and removable standard SATA HDD, the possibility of a homebrew system is there should anyone be daring enough to try.

Out of the box, the LH314321C4 comes with 60ft of cable per camera and a 10ft network cable which connects to the DVR. All units must feed back into the main system - since this DVR unit has no built in power surge or power backup options, installing it into a UPS or other backup power supply is highly recommended - at the very least, a surge protector. The biggest "oops" in this package is the lack of a VGA cable (or option to connect via a standard S-Video or HDMI). If you actually want to be able to configure and view your DVR, you must supply a monitor with a VGA input (ie: a computer monitor or a TV with VGA out).

You are reading this correctly: out of the box, you have zero way to monitor and configure this system. You must supply your own monitor and/or monitor cable.

Once you get past that hurdle (I had a spare VGA cable lying around from an old KVM set up and therefore hooked up this device to my TV), the initial set up and configuration is relatively simple. The difficulty of the placement of the cameras will of course vary home-by-home, but the 60' radius should be enough for most installations. Also, once this system is actually configured, you probably do not need to have a monitor hooked up to the DVR full time, which is where the remote monitoring option comes into play.

The LH314321C4 has the ability to set up a remote monitoring option which allows your system to connect directly to your local network and by using the Lorex DDNS service, from anywhere with internet connectivity. By using this method, you could hypothetically set up your own secured hosted service (where you would control the security option instead of relying on Lorex as your provider). If you are OK with the somewhat creepy option of having a live video feed into your house on the internet (secured or not), this is a neat feature to allow you to monitor your home while on vacation - or bored at work. By default, there are no audio monitoring options, so if you want sound pick up, you will have to purchase separate components. The device also has an option to plug into an existing home security system by way of a DSub9 connector - since I do not have any sensors with this functionality, I was unable to test. You also have the ability to backup the recorded video onto a PC via their web browser based application.

The DVR functionality was pretty standard - by default the cameras are set up to automatically record video from the cameras. You have the options of changing this to Motion, Alarm or Video Loss (video captured before the camera lost functionality). The included cameras aren't bad - directly from the box mine had quite a bit of red-bleed, but after fidgeting with the hue and saturation a little bit, it was much better. The black and white night vision was actually pretty impressive and seemed a bit crisper than the color daytime version of the video. These are not high-def cameras by any means, and the sample photos on the box are very misleading. These are slightly better than the standard webcam camera, and since the encoding is highly compressed, there's a bit of detail lost. However if you have the misfortune of being robbed, you will still probably have enough facial detail to identify the bad guy.

All-in-all this is a pretty standard system as far as the components are concerned, however the additional functionality added by the remote viewing and backup abilities pushes it past the "average" benchmark. And while the browser based application is rather clunky and cumbersome, it does work (hopefully Lorex will make sure to keep their firmware and software upgrades timely). In my mind, this system lost the five-star mark due to the rather thoughtless lack of a VGA cable and zero sound support. The lack of expansion options (ie: adding additional wired or wireless cameras beyond the initial four) also hurt. Still, for a good ninety percent of the homes out there looking for a DVR-based video security system, this is a good product.

I live in a 2,000 sq ft home next to a private park. We also live near enough to a freeway that when the police are chasing someone, they tend to end up in our area after getting off the freeway. Our park is frequently being tagged by poser gangsters from our neighborhood. So I was excited to receive this four-camera set and see if I could lend some help to our homeowner's association. That's the context.

The reviews this product has thus far received have been excellent and spot-on. So I won't repeat their findings. But I will add to it. First, seriously consider if you are going to install this yourself or hire someone to do it for you. I decided to do it myself. Because I made that decision, I made a serious time commitment. Because of where I needed to place the four cameras, I was in for a lot of work. Little did I realize just how much work it would be. As previous reviewers have stated, this kit comes with four 60ft spools of wiring. I've found this isn't nearly enough to cover all four sides of my home. Running wire to these areas is quite the chore. Longer wire can be purchased from the Lorex website but you'll pay $70 for a 100ft roll and $130 for a 250ft roll. That's way too expensive for wire. So, I went online and found a spool of wire that I could splice into the middle. I bought a 1,000ft roll for only $40, free shipping. It worked great. You just need to know how to properly splice wire which isn't that hard. If you plan on reaching the four corners of your house, you'll be spending a lot of time in your attic, under your home, and on tall ladders drilling holes through your siding. Just be prepared for that. And think things through.

Second, having internet access to your cameras requires more Geek know how than my brain contains. If you're challenged in that way, be prepared to either hire a Geek, or bribe someone you know with dinner in exchange for a set up. I have not gotten to this point yet because the person I know is very, very busy. Once their schedule clears I'll be making tri-tip.

Third, the scenario I did not think about when I installed it is this. What if someone breaks into my house? A smart thief will think to find the DVR and take that. Since I have it connected to our big screen TV, I'm hoping they take the TV and leave the evidence. Otherwise, what I would have to do is purchase a computer monitor, hide it along with the DVR, and hope the thief does not track it down. I'd also have to rewire everything. At this point, I'm counting on the continued stupidity of criminals. I wish I would have thought about that before I went to all that work installing it where it is.

All in all it's a great product. You just need to really think things through before setting it up. I hope these extra hints are useful to you.

I reviewed many camera systems before deciding on this one. The good reviews and features I were looking for at a reasonable price are available in this package. I needed good night vision, motion detection, continuous recording, and the like. This provided all of that.

I appreciate the ease of setup here. Even without instructions one could put this together with no problem. If you can put the round peg in the round hole, the square peg in the square hole... then you've got it. Piece of cake.

While the camera quality is not awesome, it's decent enough. The night vision is some of the best I've seen in any security package that I've been exposed to. Day vision looks more like a webcam.

But my enthusiasm was seriously cooled when dealing with the software. It's complicated where it shouldn't be, the design is poor, it's cryptic, and has some bugs. For starters, many of the system's functions are represented by symbols instead of words, and often times the symbols don't represent what they're supposed to mean very well. Next, the control is terrible. Using a mouse, I could not figure out how to change a setting or parameter. I could select it, but not change it. Can you believe they want you to use the MOUSE WHEEL to implement changes? This makes no sense and is totally backwards. If we're using a PC device to control it, why not make it work like a PC?

And of course, the hard drive continues to fill. Despite the fact that I've deleted everything on it, it continues to show full. It will continue to record, but I'm now at all times in the dark about how much space is remaining because the software inaccurately reports remaining disk space.

In any case, if you need a full featured system and the lowest price you can get, look no further. If you don't want to spend a lot of time learning the system, I'd look for something more user friendly.

OK, since I will say from the outset that since this unit really is designed more for the small store owner, this will be a more serious review! Store ownership is serious business.

So here we go...

It took me about 15 minutes to unpack the product and another 15 to make all the necessary connections. The connectors are color coded, which makes it easy to setup. I then consulted the Quick Setup Guide to verify that I had not missed anything.

The only issue I had was finding a suitable display to use for the setup. Since the device has a network port, I expected to be able to configure and use it over the network, similar to using other network devices such as a wireless camera. I did not find any indication in the manual that this is possible. Not only that, but I only had a DVI cable for my display, so I had to search around for a VGA cable. Once I found a VGA cable, I was able to connect it to a monitor and was able to continue.

The system boots up very quickly. You see the Lorex logo and hear the faint hard disk drive spinning. And after a few seconds, the system was up displaying all 4 camera feeds. I continued to follow the guide. The next step was to setup date and time, but the system had already updated it via the network, which was a pleasant surprise!

I tried the remote control initially, but opted to use the mouse instead. The interface is easy to navigate. It does not look like the most modern interface, but it is simple to use, which is more important than fancy effects. The left mouse is used to select an option as usual and the right mouse button acts like a back button, which is nice. The system also beeps each time you click, giving you immediate feedback which I personally liked a lot.

Issue number 1:

There is no hover text, which makes icons and options a bit harder to decipher. Some of the options are self explanatory, like the wrench icon which is for the setup menu. But other options have icons that are not very intuitive. For example, the backup menu has an icon that looks like a USB thumb drive. At first I was thinking how can I backup up to 320GB of data onto a thumb drive? It makes sense once you read the manual which states that you can backup individual recordings to a thumb drive up to 8GB in size.

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The basic options are easy to configure. But the more advanced options, like scheduled recording or recording options, required me to consult the instruction manual.

Setting up access from a PC requires installing and configuring QuickTime. Once QuickTime is configured according to the guide, you can access the DVR using a web browser. The web interface is called DVR Netview. The guide specifies Internet Explorer (IE), which worked without problems. I tried accessing the DVR using FireFox 3.0 and it did not work at all. All I got was the content of an HTML document. I got the same results using Safari from my Mac. The manual states that FireFox is supported but you need to install the IE-in plug-in, which I did not attempt. Note that even if the DVR Netview site loaded properly on non-IE browsers, some function will be missing because it uses ActiveX controls.

Issue number 2:

Another thing that was not clear in the guide was which user ID could log into the DVR Netview site. The guide lists 2 IDs and neither worked. A screenshot in the guide showed another ID being used. Consulting the instruction manual clarified the issue. There are separate ID for local and network access. Following the instructions on the manual worked fine. Let me reiterate: keep the manual nearby!

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From the DVR Netview I was able to view live video from all 4 cameras. It has a top message bar that lists active cameras, alarms and motion detection. The interface has 4 main options: setup, live video,playback and backup. The backup feature uses Active X, which worked fine from IE. You can also setup Dynamic DNS to access the system from the Internet. This requires that you signup for a free account on Lorex's website.

You cannot perform all the administrative configuration options from the DVR Netview. You will need to access the system locally to perform certain configuration tasks. And the interface, while usable, is not very user friendly. It is also slow to load, even over the wired LAN. It was due to the first time I accessed it, as subsequent access were more responsive.

Once everything is setup, the system will record continuously. The system can be changed to record until the hard drive is full or to record based on events. There are 3 types of events: motion, alarm and video loss. You can then search for these event when playing back recordings. I setup the system to record motion events. You can set the amount of time to record once the event is triggered. You can also select motion sensitivity and the areas of the captured images to monitor for movement. I did not use these options. Using the default worked as expected. One missing feature I really miss is the ability for the system to send an email message with an image of the event. Stand-alone network cameras have that feature.

Accessing the system locally, the recordings can then be listed under the List option, which shows all the recorded events. You can filter by event type and camera, making it easier to narrow down the list incase you have many recordings listed. Clicking on an event brings up the playback menu to review the recording.

Issue number 3:

Another missing feature is the ability for the DVR Netview to list events and allow you to play them back over the network. Without this option it is not possible to know what date and time to playback to review recorded events. This is a big oversight because without it,the remote viewing software is mostly good to view the live feed.Otherwise you will find yourself randomly playing back segments in hopes to confirm that no events were triggered. Having the email feature would help the remote viewing software immensely because you could then set the playback around the time the event is listed on the email.

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Overall, though this is a good product. It's small, quiet, and integrated. It is easy to setup and use. Even with the aforementioned shortcomings, I was able to setup a camera monitoring system that records events based on motion. The system's local console works well. The remote viewing software needs some features to make it useful, but even then I would recommend this to someone looking to setup and use this system locally. Just bear in mind this is probably overkill for a "normal"-sized house, and would definitely be more useful in a small store.

4/5.

Considering the review I gave a previous Lorex webcam product, I didn't have much hope for the Lorex Edge LH314321C4 as a whole. Overall, I was extremely impressed, however, like any good product, you need to plan this out before you start bringing out the power tools.

Each camera has a 60 foot cable to plug back into the DVR, which means you need to put some forethought into where these are all going before you start. The camera's aren't wireless (I can't stress this enough). As weird as this sounds, you need a Belkin F3H982-25 Pro Series High-Integrity VGA/SVGA Monitor Replacement Cable (25 ft.) to actually do something with it. I guess their idea was that you'd buy a dedicated LCD monitor to view this, which might be a good idea. The box can mount on a monitor's VESA bracket on the back of the monitor. However, it's been my experience that very few monitors have independent stands, so this might just end up sitting normally.

The installation of the camera is pretty easy. In fact, it's pretty foolproof. All the mounts are included. The cameras look and feel pretty sturdy and are made for both indoor and outdoor use. Once plugged in, the cameras are VGA (640x480). The quality of the images are pretty decent. For the price, I can live with it. Of course, I would have liked HD video and audio, but then again, you have to remind yourself that the $600 for this type of system is actually a bargain. The recording can be scheduled or set on a timer and the motion detector can be set to trigger recording.

The second part is that this is "network ready," meaning you have the ability to watch remotely over the internet. This does require a physical network cable connection to a router or switch. For some reason, I had to manually assign IP addresses, subnet mask and gateway. I would have hoped that the router would have been able to pick these up via DHCP. Configuring the box for remote viewing was a bit more tricky: You have to define QuickTime streaming ports, Bitrate and more. Lorex also gives you a DDNS entry, so that you can go to a static URL instead of trying to remember the remote site's IP address (even if it changes, like mine.) In short, it's a real pain to get this set up for remote viewing.

Still, I'm not too upset. The Lorex Edge LH314321C4 is a pretty cost effective way to monitor a home or business. It could use some serious polish when it comes to getting the network components to work better, but if you're not relying on remote viewing, then this isn't a big deal. The downsides are that this system can't expand beyond the four original cameras, which, depending on your needs and budget, this might be a non-issue. The lack of a VGA cable isn't a show-stopper, but you might want to consider a dedicated display for this.

At first I was impressed by this system... but after constant trouble with this thing, I've had it. Some of the problems with it:

* Camera quality is very low:
* Cannot make out license places or faces unless they're looking into the camera.
* The camera has a lot of fringing...
* Camera switches in and out of B&W mode erratically.
* The IR floods do not throw enough light to be useful.
* The video connectors are exposed and I can't see how they'd last very long outdoors.
* VGA output only? Why?
* Video output can't use widescreen monitors.
* I can't get the firmware updated despite following the directions in the manual.

I received this and was very excited to get set up as I live in a rural area and would love to be able to monitor what goes on outside and inside my house when I am not home. I was a little apprehensive as I am not a techie person, I can get frustrated easily but the instructions pretty much stated it was easy to set up, so that convinced me. To my surprise, this was extremely easy to set up and from unpacking the two boxes, to hooking up to my computer monitor, this took less then 15 min to turn on and set up my first camera.

This system came in one box, and had two boxes within. One was the DVR, and the other the cameras. I unpacked everything, hooked up to my computer monitor ( that I had previously as well as the monitor VGA cable) and I started with one camera in my office window and hooked that up to the DVR. The setup instructions were easy to follow, and starting with one camera was right for me. Once I powered on the system, when it fully loaded within 20 seconds my camera was already online recording me. I put it in my window, and begin to record. It took me a while to figure out the menu options on the DVR ( with the included mouse ) but after a while I figured out the options. One thing I wish about this system is the menu options were easier to understand but after playing around, and following the paper manual it came together.

I then hooked up the reminding cameras, the other two in windows outside, and one in my living room to watch what my dogs do in the day. The wires were kinda a pain to run, and took a while but its better then a wireless option where I have to worry about batteries.

I have to say the quality is extremely good for the cameras. At night, the window cameras don't record anything but close up, inside at night in my living room is great and the daytime through the windows is awesome. I am planning to run one of the cameras outside to record more of what goes on at night soon and that will be awesome to watch. I love coming home and rewinding and watching what happen outside and inside. I haven't caught anything yet other then neighbor kids looking teasing my dogs from the street ( making them bark ). The system came with stickers to post outside, but I haven't posted the stickers as I don't want to let people know I am recording them, especially nosy neighbors!

I am excited to set up internet remote viewing which I will do later this month to be able to monitor my home from work ( and family can monitor as well ). The instructions suggest advanced knowledge for internet set up, but I am familiar with my router settings, so that looks to be half the complexity. Sound is not included with the cameras I received, but audio capable cameras are available for purchase. Overall I am extremely thrilled and happy to have this system as I can monitor what goes on at my home when I am not home!

The DVR was easy for me to setup but I had to buy a wireless bridge so I could it use on the network. I able to monitor my cameras while I am at work . You can also set it up to send pictures to an email address, which is nice to keep historical data.

Make sure you are familiar with being able to forward ports from your router to the DVR.

The cameras are not the best. They are functional during the day but do not before very well at night.

Cabling is kind of a pain in the butt if you do not have a clear path to run the cables through. I had break out the drill, which was not an issue for me it just made the install take a little longer

I rate this system 3 1/2 stars. That being said I would recommend this system as good entry level setup