Do I need an NVR?
Pros, Cons, And Everything in Between
What is an NVR?
Foremost, an NVR is a surveillance recorder. It is the brain of your NVR Security system. It receives, processes, and stores the digital footage from your digital or Internet Protocol (IP) cameras. NVRs are often mistakenly called DVRs, but they are different. A DVR is designed to process footage from analog cameras transmitting not yet digitized footage over outdated BNC cabling. An NVR receives footage from digital or IP cameras transmitting data over an ethernet cable (Cat5, Cat6, or even Cat7). Analog systems are outdated and we do not recommend them unless you are working with a legacy system that you are not yet prepared to upgrade. For more information, we have a guide on why we don’t carry analog systems due to hacking and quality concerns.Are all NVRs the same?
Short answer: NO! Long answer: Oh, Hell NO! You can’t know what’s inside of that ominous black box you’re buying without doing some homework. It could be a whole lotta inside or a whole lotta nothing. An effective NVR must possess sufficient processing power, provide security for itself and all cameras, as well as support the entire system. Don’t waste your money on an underpowered NVR. One common issue with many IP camera systems is low processing-power NVRs that cannot handle a full 1080p on every channel. To understand why you have to start with the frame rate. The minimum frame rate required for fluid movement is twenty frames per second. Any slower, and the video will appear jerky and more like a slideshow. Also missing may be critical information like the split-second an intruder looks directly at the camera or a shoplifter adds an item to their bag. The number of frames or pictures a camera captures per second is often abbreviated as “FPS.” An NVR has a fixed bitrate that determines how many FPS it can process at a time. An NVR may be able to process sixteen cameras recording at ten frames per second (a speed that will result in a jerky, inferior footage) but only eight cameras recording at twenty frames per second. Consumers fall prey to NVRs billed as “16 Channel” or “16 Camera”, but buried in the fine print is the caveat that it can only handle sixteen cameras if the cameras are recording at ten or fifteen frames per second. What they’re selling is an eight-camera NVR. While many other providers offer NVRs that can't deliver 1080P or 2MP video on every channel, SCW Admiral NVR lines can do 4K at 30 FPS and our Imperial NVR lines can do 4K at 20 FPS on every channel. Don’t waste your money on 1080p and pair them with an NVR that can only take advantage of a quarter of the cameras, and don't limit yourself to just 1080P.99% of all security system hacks are through the cameras, not the NVR.
Your NVR should be able to create an isolated network within a network
The NVR powers the camera and gives it an IP address. When you plug the camera into the back of the NVR, it subnets the camera and makes it so that it is much, much harder to hack. A camera without an NVR's subnet (a security protocol that is part of our NVRs that creates a hidden, physically separate network within your network) greatly increases your likelihood of getting that camera hacked.
The cameras plugged into SCW’s Admiral line NVR's POE ports directly or plugged into the Imperial Line NVRs Lan2 Network directly are not visible or accessible on your computer network. They run on an isolated network similar to an air gap. The only way to access these cameras is to plug a computer into those POE ports or hack into the NVR. There's a physical barrier from the cameras to the main network. Also, there's a subnetwork running on the NVRs, which means that even if you do plug a computer into the NVR's physically separate, isolated network, you would also need to know their subnet mask.
This has several advantages in addition to many other SCW NVR features:
1. Faster Networks. Unlike traditional NVRs, when plugged into the NVR’s isolated network, the camera's video feeds do not slow down your main computer network.
2. Isolated Cameras. Since they are on both a physically separated network and a subnet, your cameras are not visible on your computer network or to outsiders. You can connect to the NVR remotely and login and use the NVR as a bridge to watch the cameras, but neither you nor a hacker can log into the cameras themselves, without either logging into the NVR or being physically present to plug into the NVR and possessing knowledge about your NVR's specific camera subnet mask. (You can customize this camera's subnet if you want). 99% of all security system hacks are through the cameras, not the NVR.
3. Less maintenance. SCW’s line has one-click firmware updates straight from the NVR/Camera, meaning, you don't even have to search for, find, or download the footage on a computer. You just click a button when using the device and update the firmware automatically. So, the update process is not difficult, to begin with. Also, you don't have to worry about updating the cameras for cybersecurity reasons, since the NVR is the only device that can be accessed remotely. It is much easier to keep one device up to date than dozens or hundreds.
4. You can record your SCW cameras continuously, via motion, or even via VCA (video content analysis) events (like line crossing or intrusion detection). You can create individual schedules for each camera, including hours for motion recording mode, hours for continuous recording mode, hours for event recording mode, or even hours when that camera is off completely.
5. With our cameras and an SCW Admiral or Imperial NVR, you can get email alerts of motion detection alerts or VCA events. You can choose specific dates and times for these alerts to be active and other times for these alerts to be ignored.
6. You can set up push notifications for our SCW Go Application for Android and iPhone for motion or analytics events. Push notifications are good supplemental notifications but should not be your primary method of security alerts. Many consumer-grade devices only have push notifications. This is a bad design for two reasons. First, It is important to remember that push notifications do not have a message received confirmation handshake the way that email does. This means that if a push notification is sent while your phone is out of reception or out of battery, there's no way to know that it wasn't received and there's no way to get it later. Second, email notifications or FTP notifications provide a safe, independent location that stores a copy of motion detection images. This means that if your NVR is stolen, you have a copy of the last few images that triggered an alert.
7. Unlike consumer cameras and recorders, SCW cameras and NVRs don’t miss things when recording on motion. Many consumer-grade cameras use PIR motion sensors to trigger a camera to turn on when something gets close enough to the sensor. This saves battery life and costs less because they don't need as fast of a processor as video analytics-based motion detection. However, there's a major drawback to this design. There's a delay (0.5-3 seconds) that can cause the camera to not record what happened. Contrast this with video analytics-based motion detection. Not only is there no recording delay but you can even record up to sixty seconds before the motion that triggered the event. With video analytics-based motion detection, the camera temporarily stores the video feed in a buffer for analysis. Then it watches the video for you to determine if motion or another video analytics event happened in the video. If motion or another trigger occurs, it stores the video on the NVR. Don't miss out on important motion events. Go back in time, before the event, to understand why it happened.
If they build it, will you come?
We like new. Our eyes grow fixed on shiny objects never before seen. That’s foundational to consumerism. Marketers lap it up. Now a handful of surveillance system providers have a new vision for security that eliminates the need for an NVR. Their push is VSaaS--Video Surveillance as a Service--in a model whereby there is no surveillance recorder. All video storage is cloud-based. To justify this radical departure much space in their advertising is devoted to maligning NVRs. A few recent titles include, “4 Reasons To Say “NO” to Your NVR”; “5 Common Myths About Your NVR or DVR Video Surveillance System”; and “27 Jan Whitepaper: How secure is your business video surveillance solution?” All of course are written by the companies’ representatives where the new commitment is to an NVR-less surveillance world.Pros vs Cons list
While it was tempting to give space to any one of the pro-cloud lists available or go the extra mile of composing new pros vs cons lists, the task is both fruitless and too subjective. For every point the pro-cloud writers made condemning NVRs, exceptions could be found.
All NVRs are not created equal.
The pro-cloud, no-NVR camp offers multiple points that look sensible on the surface. Combine that with language that is often charged--outdated, complex, restrictive, vulnerabilities, old-school. That’s not to say there is no validity to any of their arguments. The major shortcoming is vagueness.
Some pro-cloud proponents lump outdated, consumer-grade, analog DVRs in with NVRs when composing con points regarding NVRs. Compounding that apples-to-oranges arrangement, the complete list of cons typically presented cannot possibly apply to every NVR on the market. It’s as if they chose Budget Bob’s Bargain Bin DVRs & NVRs--those with the thinnest spec sheets around--and used them as emblematic of all NVRs.
For instance, the often-used claim that NVRs are limited by outdated firmware is simply untrue. SCW’s One-Click Updates are no more than clicking a button when using the device to update the firmware automatically.
Another false claim stated that cameras on an NVR security system have to be checked manually to see if they are functioning properly or are aligned. SCW’s NVRs provide alerts for individual cameras based on performance that includes multiple factors such as camera focus or tampering.
Then the big one, that NVRs represent a single point of failure. (Cue the doom-and-gloom music). The theory is that if there’s a problem with your NVR, all could be lost.
Certainly, that could be a true statement in highly specific scenarios with sub-standard NVRs. However, with SCW’s line of high-tech NVRs, redundant means of recording and retrieval is by design.
Two is better than one, but nine backups are best
One of the most dangerous aspects of this sales presentation is that it makes it seem like you have to choose between storage on the NVR level or cloud level when you can easily get both. With an SCW system you can easily get nine different types of copies of the video:- storage on the NVR
- a hot-swap NVR (a backup NVR in a different on-site location)
- FTP backup of events with our Snapshot feature
- RAID on the NVR
- a backup via eSata through the NVR
- a NAS backup through the NVR
- With SCW technology, you can choose as many or as few of these as you want. There's no reason to reduce your options. Having only one copy of your surveillance footage is a bad protocol when you can easily get multiple copies of surveillance footage by using an NVR and IP camera system.
Is the cloud less clunky?
A fluffy cloud full of data sounds cooler than a boxy, black NVR. Storing your important surveillance footage off-site in a big, sky-high, white cloud, safe from intrusion, has a futuristic appeal. But is that imagery factual enough to ditch your NVR altogether?
Again, all NVRs aren’t created equal, and some of the claims around the cyber safety and reliability of low-end quality NVRs are legitimate. There are indeed scenarios in which the cloud can prove safer and more reliable than solely relying on an NVR, but that’s a simplistic observation.
Pay to play
This recent model of VSaaS being presented by a few security companies is a well-thought-out marketing campaign. What is being offered to the consumer is to purchase new surveillance cameras, often accompanied by an unheard-of ten-year warranty, then an ongoing contractual agreement to utilize the provider’s cloud-based service. The fee may be annual or up to five years.
The cameras typically have onboard storage in the form of Micro-SD cards, and an introductory period of cloud storage may be included. But afterward?
Afterward is where the money matters. Cloud storage may sound cool but it ain’t cheap. And those cameras can only cheaply send short, blurry thumbnails to be saved, not full-length, high-quality, continuous, surveillance video, unless you have mighty deep pockets.
Saving video to your cameras’ Micro-SD cards solely is also a losing option. Those cards are designed for emergency use primarily and typically burn out in less than a year of continuous usage.
It’s basic math. The more the cameras, the more the money. And if you should decide to quit paying your annual fees to your security company, say they up their price to play, your new cameras are dead ducks, useless. That leaves you without a security system.
You own (rent) the cameras. The company owns you.
To push this plan it has become necessary from their marketing standpoint to malign NVRs. That’s the ultimate takeaway. Rather than find a means of coexistence between technologies, their new security model must appear superior in every aspect and every application.