Customer Reviews

SVAT CVP800 Mini Portable DVR Digital Video Recorder with MPEG4 Compression

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased the SVAT CVP800 with the CCDCO camera. After some minor initial bumps, I am very satisfied. When first received, the camera had a defective video cable. It took a while for me to figure out the problem, but once done, SVAT customer service was very responsive and sent a replacement cable immediately. The only significant negative comments that I have are that the CVP800 does not include or offer as an optional accessory a 12VDC plug-in car power supply; also the instruction manual is not very helpful in several areas. On the positive side, the CVP800 is extremely small (easily fits into a shirt pocket), light weight and consumes very little power (under 1.5 watt). It has a powerful feature not found on other similar mini-portable units that I evaluated, specifically, the ability to loop record, i.e., continuously record, writing over the oldest data when it reaches the capacity of the SD card. This allows the unit to record 24 hours a day forever without any attention whatsoever. If an event happens that you are aware of and want to review and save, simply stop the recorder and selectively play back the last minutes/hours recorded, and if you want to, download the data onto your computer to save it or simply pull the SD card with the recorded data, and insert a new one in the CVP800. Overall, I have found this unit to be well designed - user friendly, easy to understand, and highly flexible in both recording and playing back. The only reason I gave the CVP800 a 4-star rating (rather than 5-stars) is the absence of an out-of-the-box way to power the unit in a car other than depending on the internal AA batteries.

There's no other DVR of it's type that I could find. I have it in my glove box wired to a forward seeing sony lipstick cam and microphone for insurance reasons. I set this thing to record at full frames full fps and to always record when powered. So it only records when I have the key in the ignition and save about 3 hours worth on a 2GB card. Hasn't failed me yet.

Seems to work okay but it breaks up the video into ~10 second pieces when recording HQ (708X480?)@12 FPS. This is about an MByte. These files can be stitched together if you want to play them back with software, such as MS Movie Maker, but is a pretty big PIA.

It would be nice to find a file on your SD memory stick that started when you pushed the record button and ended when you pushed stop.

It would also be nice if it could use 12V.

Like other reviewers, this seems to be a unique product due to its small size.
However, that is not enough to make up for its shortcomings. The biggest which (related)
is a nearly unusable owner's manual and the requirement to hook up the unit to a television
in order to access the menu. The menus are not intuitive - and confirmations are not obvious.
There are some sub-menus that "seem" to lead to a function, but there is no function.

I could never get the motion detector to work correctly even after emails and phone calls to
SVAT. Dan P eventually told me he did not have an answer to the problem of why the motion detect
would continuously record even though it was in a "manual" and "motion detect" mode at 50% sensitivity.
His idea was to use a different camera (which I did with the same results). However, both cameras
are made with high end Sony chipsets and lenses.

Well, I asked for and got an RMA. Then I read the details provide in the RMA instructions. SVAT has several
places where they remind you that if you miss anything or thepackage is not in conformance, they will hold
your unit until you pay at least $50 plus return shipping. They also write that if in their sole discretion
they determine it is not a product defect, the $50/hour charge applies. I purchased this unit from Amazon for 149.99
and simply cannot take the risk of a charge that is from 30% or more of what I originally paid.
To have such a warranty with so unfavorable terms to the consumer is not, in my opinion, a valid warranty.
These details were never disclosed at the original purchase nor in the User's Guide warranty page. Buyer beware.

Once I figured out how to work it, it works well. The directions are really useless. I still haven't really got the motion detection thing figured out, but it does work. The pictures are not the best but they do serve there purpose. I think if I had looked around a little more I could have found something a little better, but all in all it does its job.

Superb, inexpensive and flexible recorder for a single camera. Worked out of the box using the included 1GB SD card but would not operate at all using the 16GB SDHC card I bought at the same time. Would not boot up or work in any way. Went to [...]and downloaded the June 2009 firmware file. Extracted from zip and transferred to the 1GB card. Placed the card into the CPC800 and went into menu. Selected SD Card and update system. Took 2 seconds. That cured the problem. Now can record for dozens of hours and can loop back around once the 16GB is full without intervention. This gives an essentially perpetual recording capability. Great little unit with many features, including variable resolution and recording quality.

Concur with the other reviewers as to the benefits of this DVR unit. I've had mine for about six months and used it 4-5 times. Always use the highest video resolution at around 12 fps. Video is acceptable but the MAJOR pain is that it splits the recorded video into MULTIPLE files which have to be JOINED using a 3RD PARTY utility to make one COMPLETE video recording. All because the engineers who designed this DVR didn't want to implement streaming media codecs in the firmware. Seriously, I've got another cheap $40.00 mini-DVR that will stream the video in the form of a single .AVI file to removable media (SD card). Good news is there are free utilities that will join the multiple .AVI files this unit creates relatively quickly, just an extra step which, IMO would not be necessary if the firmware had been designed to do streaming video.

Overall, good product, does what it is supposed to do, one star off for the multiple files issue.

I've owned two of these for 3 years - one in each car. They loop-record anytime the car is in motion. I installed a GPS-overlay box between my forward-facing camera (mounted on my rear-view mirror) and the DVR. This imprints my speed on the video. The insurance this provides against he-said she-said accidents, inaccurate laser guns (check out my youtube video), or rogue police who say one thing on the side of the road, and another in court - is priceless.

All co-workers have these installed after seeing how it reveals how 'unimpeachable, trustworthy, and honest' police officer testimony is anything but...

I don't go looking for trouble. It finds me. When it does, it's great to have an unbiased witness ready to come to my defense.

Note: If your state is a two-party consent state, you'll need to warn anyone within audio recording distance that they're being recorded. Otherwise, at best it's inadmissible, or at worst, you could be charged with felony wire-tap offenses. I solved this problem by applying small (3" x 1") red warning labels in the corner of all roll-down windows. They look like alarm stickers, but state "Notice: Any conversations inside and within 6' of this vehicle may be recorded".

I would have given it 5 stars, but I have two annoyances:

1) The A/V in/out jacks are nothing more than a 4-contact 3.5mm stereo jack. In humid environments the internal contacts become 'dirty' causing flicker in the video if the cables are bumped.
2) The video is actually split into multiple 1 - 1.5MB asf files. They can be spliced back together, but there is about a 2-4 frame loss at each seam. It's barely noticeable, but it is an annoyance. I imagine this has to be the case as the files must be completed and saved before power loss. If the power is turned off, whatever file is being written is corrupt. Each segment is about 4-6 seconds long. So you lose the last few seconds of record when you turn off the car.

Because of the age of mine, I do not have a firmware update option under the SD section of the menu. I have an email into svat to see if there is a work-around. For now, my max SD size is 4GB (non-SDHC).

If you want to see videos of how this works in a car, look up my username on utube.

The only con I noticed is it dont accept SDHC cads. But if you manage to buy some 4G or 8G non sdhc cards it works. The porblem is those are very difficult to find (and more expensive and non trustable cards).
As I did notice it seems to be an 2006 model, but lacks nothing it promises, with lots of options, including a grid were you can select wich areas of the screen trigers the recording.But the best are the loop dvr sistem, were it rewrite the card as it got full, and this is a very difficult to find option among all those tiny recorders all arround
Very nice, and came with all cables

This is a good mini video recorder....Good for hidden video or car video applications...Would not recommend for long term recording as it wont replace a standard DVR in search and function options. Good Value/Quality for the money.