CIB J960H04N 960H H.264 HDMI 4 CH Network Security Surveillance DVR Recording System

This is the 2nd CIB K404AV I have bought, and I've used/installed other similar budget DVRs in the past so I'm pretty comfortable with them. Installation and use is as easy, or easier, than others of this class... The menus are a bit confusing if you are new, but that's the case with all of this kind of product. If you are technically savvy you can set this up and operate it no problem. I had to contact the seller for firmware updates, and their customer service was fast and helpful, but it took a little back and forth before I got the update since they kept thinking I meant the client software. The mac client works great, but the web-based interface only works with IE, which is pretty standard for these types of DVR. Its a minor inconvenience, but just having mac support was enough to make me switch brands to this make/model instead. For the price, this is a great little DVR.

I received a different model that was in the picture. It did not have a power switch on the dvr and the remote was different from the one shown.

The specs on this dvr were good and the review sounded ok but I have had nothing but trouble with it. As soon as it arrived it sounded like there was rocks rattling around inside of it. It was packaged nice but I decided to call CIB before I took it out of the plastic to see what they suggested. The lady was friendly and after I told her the situation, she stated that it was NORMAL. I should have listened to my instinct and returned it but I didn't. The stickers on the screw-holes state that once you open the case, you will void your warrant but this unit comes without a hard drive so I had no choice. There was all kinds of little plastic tab pieces broken inside and that was the noises I heard. If you look at the top of the dvr, you can see the middle sag because the cheap plastic support tab is holding up the cheap thin metal. There wasn't really much going on inside the dvr, it is only a circuit board and some small stuff but mostly just space for the hd and a lot of extra room. I build computers so hooking the hd up was easy but I think anyone could do it as there is only the power and sata cable to hook up. The hd will ask you to format and everything else was pretty much easy to get figured out. I did have some problems with the port forwarding. I emailed CIB and they replied quickly and helped me through it. I emailed back and forth and eventually, I had everything set up and working. The motion detection seems a little buggy, sometimes I get false alarms and other times it has completely missed a car 10 feet away even after I adjust the sensitivity different. The problem I started having was that I went to review some events from the night before but the playback was 4 black screens. This started happening more and more regularly until it only recorded black screens. I power cycled the unit, reseated all the connections and finally I emailed CIB again. The emails went back and forth but they didn't know what it was. I told them that maybe it was a hard drive issue and the lady agreed. So I took the unit apart again and tried a different hard drive. It worked great for about a week and now I am getting black screens playback again... I can't return it because I opened it but it is pretty much worthless since it will not record anything. I should have returned it when I heard all the pieces inside and that doesn't seem "normal". I mostly liked the unit and the customer service was really good so I will give it two stars over all. Maybe I just got a bad unit but I don't think I will buy from CIB again or recommend it.

Setting up this DVR and getting it configured properly was a lot of work. Outdoors recording and night recording is challenging. Manual: you get a paper manual booklet which is good and a pdf file on the mini cd. The pdf is very helpful because you can search for keywords like "password", "192.168" for the network section, etc. TIPS: You CANNOT record video to a USB hard drive or USB flash drive. You can only record to a full sized standard desktop internal SATA hard drive. The flash drive can ONLY be used for backup. You can also backup or move videos to your PC, Video Format: Uses H.264 (aka mp4) Fortunately, they include a basic player and codec when ever you backup video to a flash drive and it works great and requires no install. Value: The price is low because it does NOT include a hard drive or cameras. So when price comparing add at least $50 for a new hard drive and at least $50 for two or three very cheap cameras. I purchased this because I already had new and used hard drives sitting around. I own two cameras that cost almost $100 each so I did not want to buy a Swann, Honeywell, etc system with 4 super cheap low quality starter cameras. Hidden cost: Time. It me about 10 hours including documenting to figure out how to use almost ever aspect of the product. Half of the time was wasted trying to get motion activated recording working. I blame the manual for this. It needs more examples. Keep in mind that with any system you will invest at least this much time setting up cameras, recording, play back, backup etc. But it is worth it compared to renting a GE system and paying $75+ / month and cameras must be purchased separately and you sign a two year contract! Stars: I give it 1 star and 5 stars.... Power use: 5 stars With one camera attached and recording video to a laptop style sata hard drive it consumed only 8 watts!! Compare that to a laptop which will use between 20 to 50+ watts measured with my Kill-A-Watt meter. Super light, has a tiny board inside that runs an embedded operating system (probably Linux). Low heat / runs cool and it is fan less. Fairly easy to do a basic setup. Most consumer DVR's run with the same software / menus. I watched videos on Youtube of Swann and other brands and it looks like they all use the same basic cheap hardware and OS and interface. Hopefully, the computer software is better and easier to setup and use. There are three ways to access the device: 1. direct - sit down use the included usb mouse and hook up a normal vga monitor. 2. plug in an Ethernet cable to the back of the unit and type the ip address in your computer browser. 3. Install the software and drivers cd and you can connect to the device through the Ethernet cable. I don't like Systems that include starter cameras - most of those cameras are of such low quality that they are almost unusable. The bulk of the money should be spent on high quality camers costing between $80 to $150 each. These cameras could be ok inside a convenient store but not much else. Motion detection area: Other brands do it the same way. Red blocks are where motion is read and clear is where it is ignored (think tree branches) but this is a totally backwards way of doing it. I hate the way motion detection is implemented on this unit. Maybe I am misunderstanding it but the only way I got the unit to record based on motion was by disabling alarm and setting Alarm as the condition in the time to recorded schedule. If you don't set alarm to 0 seconds then you hear annoying beeping every time a camera picks up motion. Why am I so big on motion? Why record and empty convenient store when there are no customers in it so no stealing can take place? Motion cuts way down and they way there is always something to watch not just an empty parking lot with no activity.

it is super light weight and seams delicate. pro's - hooks up easy and comes with mouse and remote con's - remote has short range of 6 feet, haven't figured out the sound yet, no dvd burner, no hard drive I hooked it up to an old hp flat monitor and it works great, I now have 4 views around the house If you want a cheap way to see what's up with out walking outside, it's a great starter system. I plan to spend a lot more soon for a 8 channel with dvd burner, something with a better name quality now that i can see where the dogs are in the yard