Compact worker: Plustek's NVR-4000

02 Nov 08

What our experts say …

Some things are just plain wrong, like roast beef without Yorkshire pudding, and Laurel without Hardy. The same could be said of a digital video recorder, without any analogue video inputs or outputs, it simply doesn't feel right, but then to be fair and in theory at least, the Plustek NVR-4000 doesn't necessarily need any.

It's a network video recorder, designed for small-scale commercial and domestic installations, to record the outputs from up to four network cameras, with the live and recorded images displayed on a networked or Internet connected PC.

Throughout its journey, video information remains within the digital domain; nevertheless old-timers like us might well argue there is still a need for at least one analogue video output, if only for a local monitor. One would also have come in quite handy during this Bench Test, for troubleshooting a blank screen scenario, but more on that later on.

As mentioned, it's a four-channel device with video data stored on a 320Gb hard drive, which should be good for up to two weeks worth of recordings at 1fps using the highest resolution setting. Speaking of which, video is processed using MJPEG compression at VGA (640 x 480 up to 120fps), 480 x 360, CIF (320 x 240), 240 x 180, 176 x 144 and QCIF (160 x 120) resolutions. For those that may be interested, it uses a ARM CPU, running an embedded version of the Linux operating system, though none of this is apparent, or indeed important, to anyone using it as all operations are conducted using a well designed graphical user interface.

Recordings can be scheduled or triggered by the machine's motion detection system. This uses a simple to configure resizable 'window' (two per camera can be created) with individual object size and sensitivity settings. There are also options to set up email notification and web serving for remote login over the Internet and it has built-in PTZ support for a number of Axis IP cameras.

It's worth mentioning at this point that this is a Windows only system (XP, 2K or Vista); it's not too demanding on resources but, needless to say, the faster the CPU the better, and plenty of RAM and good graphics capabilities are an advantage.

The NVR-4000 is surprisingly compact, a good deal smaller than most current DVRs and roughly the size of a digital TV set-top box. The front panel is pretty sparse with just seven indicator LEDs, for power on, hard drive activity and to confirm the WAN connection to the network and LAN connections to the four cameras. It doesn't get much more interesting around the back; there are five RJ-45 sockets for the cameras and router cables and a standard DV power socket for the external mains adaptor. The only other features of interest are an exhaust port for the surprisingly noisy cooling fan and a mystery 9-pin D-Sub socket labelled 'Comm'. We suspect this may be for external alarm connections but we couldn't find any mention of it in the instruction manual.

It's fairly crowded inside the case with the hard drive and its mounting brackets taking up around a half of the available space. The remainder is occupied by the main PCB, cables and connectors. It looks reasonably tidy and well put together and, in spite of the densely packed components, the fan seems to be doing its job and it never gets more than slightly warm to the touch.

Setup and operation

This should be a breeze but, as is the way of such things, our sample stubbornly refused to connect to the camera. There was absolutely no problem communicating with the NVR through a PC and we managed to log on, access and interact with the menus without any difficulty, and this is where an analogue video output would have come in handy. Without one it is difficult to isolate the problem. Hooking up a monitor to the unit might at least have helped to narrow the problem to the camera or the DVR, without it we had to go down the long and (for us) the very well trodden road of network testing and configuration.

The problem turned out to be a mixture of address conflicts, DCHP settings and the IP camera username and password being too short, a problem, we have been told by the helpful folk at Plustek technical support, will be addressed.

When eventually the camera can be persuaded to talk to the DVR, and the DVR is talking to a PC, after logging on with username and password the PC screen displays a 'live' view, showing all connected cameras. Incidentally, this is best accomplished using Internet Explorer, we tried it with Firefox and although it works with the Java display applet, it was unable to install the Active X add-on, which means several functions are unavailable.

Back in Internet Explorer (v6 and above) and using the Active X or Java applet the available Live View options are for a single or quad display. Around each camera window there are controls for taking a single snapshot, manual recording enable, PTZ sliders an alarm indicator and playback controls. Camera operation is very straightforward and PTZ functions are very intuitive with the camera moving to a selected position simply by clicking on an item or object of interest on the PC screen

All of the NVR’s setup options are accessed by clicking the Advanced button and this opens a set of menus. At the top is Status, which does pretty much what it says, showing the machine’s ID and network settings. Below that is the Network menu, where the key WAN and LAN settings can be changed. Third on the list is IP Cam, which leads to a set of sub menus the first of which is Device Management. This is where camera assignments are made and a place that we came to know very well during the over-long password debacle. Also on this menu is the setup for the motion detector, changing the video setting for each camera (resolution, recording quality, image rotate, colour, brightness, sharpness, time/date & ID overlays, live and recorded frame rates). The last item on the IP Cam menu is Event Settings and this is used to set up alerts and responses (email notification, upload image to FTP server, auto record, activate output port).

Moving on, the next menu item is Hard Disc, this shows drive capacity and there's a button for formatting the drive. That's followed by System and a series of sub menus for assigning user names and passwords, updating the NVR's firmware and restoring factory settings, a System log, System Settings (device name and OSD language), and date and time settings. The Database menu comprises a set of alarm, system management and recording logs and finally, the Schedule Settings menu is used to set up camera recording times.

Apart from our tussle with the initial configuration none of this is rocket science and the menus are generally well laid out and easy to use.

Performance

MJPEG recording has a relatively light touch and at the highest resolution and quality settings there is only a small and barely noticeable increase in processing noise and artefacts, compared with the live image. This manifests itself as a slight graininess and reduction in colour depth, but you have to look quite hard to spot it, and as usual a lot depends on the capabilities of the camera.

On the lower resolution settings the image degrades quite sharply. There's little incentive to use them as they appear to have only a marginal effect on recording times, though this is quite difficult to gauge without more meaningful hard disc usage indicator (there is just a simple percentage used readout on the Status menu).

Otherwise there is little to be concerned about. It is solidly built and although you are not supposed to hit anything that uses a hard disc drive, in order to relieve earlier frustration we gave it a few sharp taps with the Security Installer rubber mallet, which it didn't seem to mind at all.

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