Customer Reviews

Panasonic BL-C101A Fixed MPEG-4 Network Camera (White)

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

 

 

The Panasonic BL-C101A Fixed MPEG-4 Network Camera is the 3rd Panasonic Network cam I have purchased in the last year. The images are OK depending on lighting condition, which I knew before I purchased. Definitely not a low light camera. I like the 1 wire POE connection! Adding the camera to the recording software was easy. This product is a great value: where else can you get an internet/mobile phone accessible security camera with recording software and Panasonic quality for a little over $100?

I purchased this camera as an upgrade for the older BL-C1A. Unfortunately the image quality was terrible (especially when compared to the clean image from BL-C1A). Unclear if the problem was specific to my unit or a general problem. The MPG4 encoding is great and even MJPEG encoding is much faster. The microphone is a nice touch and the field of view is improved over the BL-C1A. However, none of this can make up for terrible image quality.

This camera uses Panasonic's "Proprietary POE". POE is P.ower O.ver E.thernet. In a small business setting, I need the thing to work with my POE switch. Instead, Panasonic wants this to be powered by their proprietary device. I give them credit for naming it properly. The box actually says "Proprietary POE" in large letters. It's too bad that Amazon couldn't reveal that to customers. I returned mine but will soon buy something a little more expensive from Amazon's selection of true POE cameras. The specs and other reviews indicate that this is a nice camera and a good value. It gets three stars for not including this critical specification in the description.

I've had this camera for about a year. For the money, it is an excellent value. Has a decent quality image, good features and the built in POE injector is a real plus. In this price range, it's hard to find a better camera. Just realize that you'll need good lighting to get any kind of image at night.

I bought this for a great price of $54.99 and for the quality I think it is a good value. I choose wired because the location for the camera had weak wireless reception. However, I expected the BL-C101A to be physically configured like the BLC121A when used in wired mode. I missed that it used POE. But even if I had seen that, I would not have realized that the POE adapter would be a seperate component from the camera itself and that I would need 2 ethernet cables. More components and wires than I wanted in the camera location. The POE adapter should be shown in the product pictures or made more visable to the purchaser. For some scenarios the separate POE adapter could be a benefit, but not for all and not for mine. Had I known this I would have spent the extra money for another BLC121A and just used it in wired mode.

Great product for the price, works as stated & arrived in a timely manner. I would recommend this to any one who has a computer and has a network set up or knows how to set up a network.

I liked this well enough when I bought it, but now it has stopped responding and a factory reset has not fixed it. I have one other Panasonic BL-C101A, and three other cameras from the same product line, and they are all still working - as this one was - so I'm sure I didn't just miss something. It just died.
I have now spent more time than the product is worth to verify it's really the camera itself that died, and hunting around through the product docs and on Panasonic's web site for warranty information (which I can't find). So I don't know if this is still under warranty. It is not worth working on further, but it is worth dinging them in an unfavorable review. I might add, the docs and other product support means ought to make finding warranty information easier. It may be in there somewhere, but I give up.

This is a great little camera for the price. Setup was a snap, I was up and working in no time. After playing with the settings for a little while, I had it set up just the way I wanted. You don't have to tweak the settings if you don't want, I just wanted a larger image and I use static IP's on my network.

The image quality is amazing, I was blown away. Compared to the D-link camera it replaced, there isn't any comparison. When my outdoor camera dies, it will be replaced with a Panasonic too.

The one thing that concerned me after I set it up was the lack of ability to capture a snapshot to put on my website. You can FTP an image by setting up a timer trigger, but the choices are 1 sec (too often), 1 min (too often) and 1 hour (not often enough). After poking around all the different pages that you can view and looking at the source code of them, I finally found the link. Add "/SnapshotJPEG?View=Normal", without the quotes, to the end of your camera URL and you will see a snap shot with no menus or other data, just a jpeg. There are lots of options you can put and you have to have at least one or no image will display. Of course, you need to set up your router to forward to the port specified to the cameras internal ip address. Just check your router manual to see how to do that.

Bottom line, if you are looking for a low price, quality camera, this is the one to buy!

easy to set up if you have some understanding of IP addressing. pointed browser at the .253 address on the home network, set up the user account.

I really like that the power supply injects power over the ethernet cable, so there is only one wire to run.

Resolution is fine for a general security cam. It is a reasonably solid unit with thick metal bracket.

Low light sensitivity is ok for what it is.... As it approaches dusk outdoors, inside spaces without lighting become too dark to be useful.

Running mine with a synology NAS (surveillance station) and the integration was straight forward.

Would love to see an IR model for nighttime use.

I was hoping this camera would function as a motion detection camera that would record clips & upload them to my FTP- unfortunately it cannot do this. (FTPing of MPEG4 clips)

This camera was purchased to replace the BL-C1A (also a good product). My only gripe with this product is that it cannot FTP the MPEG images to a server of your choice. It WILL store the images on the camera for viewing; however the camera does not have that much memory, and unless you enable overwriting the stored image, you will maybe get 20-30 seconds total mpeg4.

I don't understand why it cannot FTP the image out- its already storing the clip locally. Conversations with Panasonic support have verified this, and they also add that NO PANASONIC cameras- even their professional products- allow FTPing of the MPEG4 clips.

If you plan to use this camera as remote-viewing, it works perfectly. This camera works as advertised in all regards except for the aforementioned one.