Customer Reviews

Sony SNC-M3W Pan/Tilt IP Wireless Network Camera w/Audio

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

 

 

Firstly, let me state that I do not own this product, but as of only a few hours ago, I almost bought it.
The reason I am writing this review is because over the past few days I have been doing a lot of research, and learnt many things which I felt I should share with others. So let this be a review about feature comparison and not one from actual usage of the product (though I had it demo'd to me in the store).

My focus originally centered upon this Sony SNC M3W, the Pananosic Bxxxx model, the Linksys, and the Dlink. Very soon, for reasons I won't mention, it became clear that the choice was between the Sony and the Panasonic.

I really liked the Sony, as it had virtually all the features I wanted, the main purpose of which was to allow me to monitor my baby who is about to be born. The features important to me are that it should be wireless, and allow me to hear my baby (ie., has built in mic). Of course, the picture quality is important too.
In terms of these features, that is where the Sony shines and the Panasonic falls. Sony not only has a built-in mic, but also lets you hook up speakers, so that not only can I hear my baby, I can TALK to her.
The Panasonic, unfortunately, can do neither. This was a big disappointment for me, because I think apart from that, the Panasonic picture quality is better (I was comparing in the shop).
The key advantage of the Panasonic over the Sony, which is where Sony falls, is that Sony's wireless standard only supports 801.11b, and does not support 801.11g. If your wireless router is 'b', then it makes no difference to you. However, 'b' routers are increasingly out of date as 'g' is much faster, and if you have a 'g' router like me, then even though you can still use the Sony, your entire wireless network will have to run on the slower 'b' standard because of the Sony. I was unwilling to make that compromise, so I very reluctantly had to dismiss the Sony too.

btw, another difference between the Sony and Panasonic is that the Panasonic does not have motion detect (a feature I'd like to have for surveillance purposes). instead, it relies on 'heat sensing' to determine whether there's a person present. I dunno, but that didn't appeal to me.

So which camera had everything I wanted? It was actually ANOTHER Panasonic outdoor surveillance camera. That was a beautiful and wonderful product, which I don't think they sell here on amazon. The problem was, it cost almost twice as much as this Panasonic. That model series begins with a C. I couldn't fault it in any way, except for the price. It also uses a ccd lens which is much better tha the CMOS lens that both this Panasonic and the Sony uses, giving superior picture quality. Well, that's why the cost is much higher, and also cos it's designed so that you can even use it OUTDOOR.

So which camera did I end up with? A very little known brand called Planex. (www.planex.net). It was priced at the same range as the Sony and thsi Panasonic, ran on wireless 'g', uses a ccd lens, had a built-in mic, could pan-tilt at a much larger angle, but the only drawback (very sad) was that it wouldn't let me hook speakers up to it - ie., I won't be able to talk to my baby... Pity they don't sell the product here.

To close, I'd like to come back to this Sony model. If you are using wireless B router, and don't intend to upgrade then this is just about perfect. It also looks very sleek, though a little big (quite a bit bulkier than the Panasonic and Dlink). If you ever want multiple cameras, then this is great, because the platform allows you to hook them all up seamlessly, even though they may be different models (eg., the SNC M1, or M1W, or M3).
It's just really such a pity that a product being released this late in the game only supports the 'b' standard.

Anyway, hope my research helps you to make your decision.

For a wireless network camera with two-way audio, this model from Sony is an excellent value. Everything worked as advertised. The size is excellent and can be easily placed in many locations. There is a setup wizard which greatly helps in doing the network setup to make the camera accessible from the Internet. However, be warned that if your have a router that is not covered in the wizard list, you will need to know about port forwarding and do a manual setup. A business-class router firewall has rules that may require you to get some assistance, so don't assume you can just plug the camera in have have it work. That being said, if you know how to set up the router, the camera does what Sony says it can do, and well. Amazon's price is steep, well above almost every other dealer, so I expect the Amazon price will come down in the near future.

The prior review was written on June 21, 2005. Followup as of 10-30/05:

The camera continues to run well at a remote location. Another reviewer indicated that it wouldn't work with a D-Link router with encryption on, but I have the same setup and it works fine. The camera sends me a JPEG snapshot every day very reliably. I can access it regularly with both a web browser and the Sony recording software that comes free with the unit. The motion detection works well. I discovered this one day when someone was cleaning the windows at the remote location and got in the view of the camera. The camera started firing off warning emails to me.

Another reviewer indicated that they did not like the 802.11b wireless limitation. I agree, but from a practical sense this is not a real limitation due to most high speed connections even within a LAN not running a more than 10 Mbps anyway. It would be nice if Sony went to 'g', though. Also, the pan feature is quite coarse in its movement, with the panning angle changing drastically when you try to move it slightly. I'm not sure if this is fixable in firmware, but since it's so hard to even find the Sony support for these cameras, it almost doesn't matter!

Overall, the camera has run well, and several friends have now purchased theirs based on my experience.

I was looking for a network webcam, ideally one that could be remotely controlled via a browser. I stumbled on the Sony line of "M" cams and decided to order the SNC-M3W. Setup was easy, as the configuration tool discovered my router (Linksys WRT54G) and set everything up. I did change the cameras port assignment from the default, but that was also easy. Once the camera was initially setup using an ethernet cable, I entered my 802.11 info, including WEP key, and was off and running wirelessly.

Video options include MPEG4 or Motion JPEG at various resolutions. Using MPEG4, it's possible to achieve 30fps with full audio. Impressive. Routing the port through my DSL modem to the Linksys, and through the Linksys to the internal IP of the camera was also easy and my DSL connection provides adequate bandwidth for uploading the video. (Documentation says it requires 300K up). Motion detection or periodic triggers can send emails or you can FTP files at timed intervals.

The camera's web server allows set up of multiple users, logs access, allows preset locations for the camera to point, etc. On the PC side, video recording software is included that lets you schedule HDD recordings from one or multiple cameras to setup a surveillance system.

Easy to setup use or you can configure most anything manually, great picture quality and control all in a nifty form factor. I had it up and running in a few minutes time. It was better than I was expecting.

While the quality of the images can be a bit grainy at times, I stop and think about what is being accomplished here, transferring video through a LAN or a WAN wireless. Just 5 years ago this would have been cutting edge, but now it's becoming mainstream with the latest advancements in wireless technology. While the camera has it's flaws (uses wireless B, not G), its features in general will be able to accomplish the majority of the tasks you're probably looking for. Setup was pretty straight forward, but when you're trying to access through a WAN make sure that you add the port number at the end of the DDNS or your router IP, that wasn't real clear in the instructions.

Cool features about this product:
1. Being able to email a snapshot periodically using the "trigger" feature that is built in. One downside is it has a minimum of 1/2 hour for periodical email sending. Another downside is that this is available only in JPEG mode and not MPEG4 mode.

2. FTP client can be configured to send images anywhere. I setup my Macintosh as the ftp retriever and it drops a photo on my hard drive based on my settings and timestamps each one. Save a photo every second or one a day...real flexible ftp settings are available for this camera. Again, downside is that this is available only in JPEG mode and not MPEG4 mode.

3. Motion detection is available on this, but only in MPEG4 mode. If someone triggers the camera it will send you an email alerting you. A real nice feature if you have a cell phone with email capabilities. I set up an e-mail forward to point to my standard address and phone address.

4. Video recording software comes with this camera as well which allows you to schedule and eliminate older videos so you don't burn up valuable disk space. A nice feature is that you can automate removal of older movies you don't want anymore, and never have to worry about touching the files.

5. DDNS feature is nice. It gives you a sub domain to point to your router address e.g. http://domain.snccam.net:9000/. Note the 9000 at the end, that was the only way I could access the camera from outside of my LAN as I mentioned above (you can set the port to the more standard 80 too, the wizard throws the 9000 port by default though). If you have your own web hosting account with sub domain features you can even setup a landing page which would point to the port version making it even easier to remember.

6. You can set up user accounts and only let people in that you want. This is obviously a must. It also has advanced security settings to allow specific IP addresses only in the network.

7. Tilt and pan capabilities are nice. While they can be a bit sluggish and oversensitive at times, again I remember that we are talking wireless B and full video. I can deal with the sluggishness at this price.

The list goes on, this is a great camera for the price and all of the options you get. While it doesn't display on Macintosh (requires ActiveX), I can still control the settings from my Mac which is fine with me, majority of users are going to have a PC anyways. And as mentioned I can save all of my images to any server I want, it's not OS sensitive when it comes to ftp settings.

First and foremost -- the integrated web server requires ActiveX. Firefox, OSX, and Linux are out of luck.
I set up an ftp upload to a standard site but the frequency is limited to 1/sec and there's no way to control to pan & tilt.
In theory, I could store the video stream using the packaged software (which runs as a client app only) and then serve the MPEG4 using Darwin (yeah, right). In practice, the packaged software saves the MPEG4 stream in a new, strange format that I can't open with QuickTime.

Secondly, the setup software is essential and also Windows only -- there's no way to initialize the camera without this software (the network config page, interestingly, does work with Firefox, et al).

No problems connecting this to my Apple Base Station and manually opening the port.

Integrated Web Site looks great in Explorer 6.

If anyone has figured out how to stream with a normal browser please let me know.

Bought the unit from Frys. Paid quite a lot for it.
Pros : Pan tilt feature is good, resolution is good too. But I would recommend a cam having CCD sensor instead of the CMOS sensor this camera has.
The wireless connectivity is good and the looks are sleek.
Voice microphone clarity is excellent.

Cons : Setting up intilially with the router takes a lot of time and patience. God knows what it does for so lond while we wait for the network to detect it.
The Software is lousy.. Tried FTP but it freezes after about 15 minutes of activity and the only way to get FTP working again is by rebooting again.
The image being displayed on the browser would just freeze on you and would start again after about a minute or so.Quite frustrating

When you pan/tilt, You just give a very little click on the Left or the right button and the camera will move all the way. If you want to point the cam on a particular angle, it is quite an arduous task.

Thought of installing a Firmware update thinking Sony would have realized the problems with the unit and must have uploaded a newer FIX. But even the authorized site does not mention anything about the Firmware updates, so disappointed there too.

There is no way to have timestamps on the images that are taken automatically and stored on a FTP server. Guess that is quite an important one.

Can provide more details upon request.
Manz123

With the proper set up this camera works great. I was a little worry to purchase this at the beginning because of a poor experience I had with both Linksys and D-Link network cameras. But Sony has step it up and offers a camera with great video and free software bundle. One thing I've experience in set up is to get the correct router. I think they list the following as their compatible routers:

* Linksys WRT54G
* Linksys WRT54GS
* D-Link DI-504
* D-Link 604
* D-Link 624
* Netgear WGT624
* Netgear WGT634U

The the correct router, set up is a breeze. Setting up the WEP encryption is a little confusing, but as long as the router key and camera key matches, everything works.

The vidcam has several nice functions allowing you to remotly play with it. The bandwith required varies upon the quality of video and sound you want to get out ot the vidcam. It does not support wireless encription other than WEP and will not work if the SSID is not broadcasted.

Sounds like that last guy had a problem somewhere between the keyboard and his chair :)The sony cam has a great picture and sound. Problems - it has NO support from Sony what-so-ever. If you are like the last guy - then you need support every step of the way.Also you cannot plug this product into your website in any way.The other major issue is that it ONLY works with IE, not firefox or any other browser. Generally I would say I regret buying this camera.

I found this camera frustrating. I couldn't get it to initilize when I first got it. I ended up having to ship it back to get it reset. Once I got it back I was very frustrated in setting it up. I finally got it hooked up on the LAN but needed to set up the WLAN. That took some doing but eventually I got it running. I put the camera up and the picture quality is poor at best. I'm not sure if it's because it's wireless or just the camera itself. I was hoping for a much better picture.