Ebay currently has a 720 8 camera system with DVR and 1tb HDD for $200. Same system but no HDD and 1080 cameras for a tad under $300.

 

Is the up sell worth it? It will be $150 or so extra.

 

My house is a split level with crawlspace attic. Most cameras will probably be 10' from ground or so.

1080p isn't even worth buying, IMO.  3MP or greater resolution is what's needed to provide useful information at any reasonable distance.

I agree. I have a 720p system, and although the images can get a little fuzzy, they still get the primary job done... security surveillance.   A lot of the "fuzziness" having to do with the cables, connectors, etc. The right cables can make the difference. The shorter, the better but, of course, they need to be as long as they need to be, but no longer. WiFi is also an option, but I much prefer Wired options. I can hide the cables.

More resolution is always better. I find 1080p adequate, but more would be better. Pass on 720.

More resolution is always better. I find 1080p adequate, but more would be better. Pass on 720.

 

Well, if you want to pay for 1080p or better cameras to do that kind of work, then good on ya.  It just seems like it's overkill to me, for a residential setting. For a business campus setting with ranges of 100 yards, or thereabouts, or maybe a residential lot greater than 1 acre, I could see 1080p or better resolution.  But for a row house or a much smaller plot with only 50' or shorter setbacks to the street, I'd think the 720p more than adequate. 

As you can infer from the above: it depends. What are your requirements and how are you going to use the cameras? Range? Field of view? Do you need to be able to recognize a face at 100 feet, or do you just need an alert in any motion to go investigate personally?

That is a 1500tvl analog system.   I've built both IP and analog and I still find Analog to be more stable than IP cams but way better images out of the 4mp ip cams.   I'm still running analog at home. 

 

Those cameras probably suck and you'll end up replacing them.  Just do the math here.   1tb drive $40, $60DVR, ($12 shipping) ($88 for 8 cams...$11/piece).    I've tried those cheapy cams and they stink.  Shrug, give it a go, it's only $200.00

 

1tb with 8 cams will probably give you about 6 days recording time.    I have 8 cams and a 4tb drive. and I get just under 23 days storage.

 

You might be better off finding a system with no hard drive and buying a western digital Purple for it.  Of course that hard drive will probably cost more than the entire system.

But for a row house or a much smaller plot with only 50' or shorter setbacks to the street, I'd think the 720p more than adequate. 

Try reading a stationary license plate with said camera at said distance. Then decide what you need.

 

If someone parks in front of the house, comes in and rips you off, and your camera could see the license plate but you can't read it, you won't be happy.

 

These days 4MP is the way to go. Facial recognition is not that great with 720P either.

I have hundreds of security cameras at work.  We have a combination of cameras of all ages with many different resolutions.  We review cameras for incidents that we want to investigate and often the police stop by to see if we've captured something that's happened in the neighborhoods around our buildings.  We review cameras for some event at least weekly.  There have been so many events that we've captured on camera but can't ID anyone because the resolution isn't high enough. We have also had many, many incidents that happened just feet away from where we had camera coverage.  In fact, if 95% of your property is covered with cameras, 90% of the incidents will happen off camera.  I don't know how that's possible but it's true.

 

Get the highest resolution you can afford and the most coverage you can afford.

Try reading a stationary license plate with said camera at said distance. Then decide what you need.

 

If someone parks in front of the house, comes in and rips you off, and your camera could see the license plate but you can't read it, you won't be happy.

 

These days 4MP is the way to go. Facial recognition is not that great with 720P either.

 

If I were needing to read such a license plate, then yeah, I'd probably want a 4 MP or better.  But I'm not doing that. None of my cameras are positioned that they would pick that up, anyway. Not unless my garage door was open and they parked backwards directly in the driveway (Florida is a "one plate" state). My concern is more "who is approaching the house on foot " from all different angles.

I bought 2 cameras specifically designed to read license plates and while I can read plates with my "regular" 4mp IP cams...these License plate cameras really do work.  Night or day, bright or dim, whatever.  That said, the regular images from those particular cameras are muted because it uses an IR filter and the whole image appears slightly dimmer.   It's still quite usable for regular surveillance but when you can read a plate, at night, 100 feet away, it's pretty amazing.