Experiences With Digital Watchdog?

Digital Watchdog is quite well respected in the analog / budget segment of the market. I know a few guys who swear by them - reliable, low cost, good support, etc. Beyond that I do not much about their traditional offerings.

In the last few years they came out with their own IP line and they are OEMing Network Optix HD Witness, which is an up and coming VMS.

I've used a DW DVR for some testing, and one of my dealers swears by them for their analog jobs, so I'd say they are pretty well regarded.

FWIW, while I didn't really "beat on" the DVR, from what I saw it was a nice solid unit.

Gents,

Wade from Digital Watchdog here... the ip address can be changed remotely through the web viewer and/or Pivot CMS program which can be downloaded from our website.

The mobile apps are most certainly designed to operate via cellular you are not limited to LAN / WAN... please check them out at the apple store and/or the droid market. They are free and i have test sites on our website for you to use.

Not sure why you have found our SW interface to be overly difficult as most integrators actually compliment us on the ease of use for both the installer but more importantly the end user. The HD Witness / DW Equivalent is the DW Spectrum IPVMS is also free to download and test drive from our website. Please give it a test drive and yes the new 1.5 release does integrate the VMAX series of DVR's with the IPVMS. The DVR is now an encoder with reduced license cost to the integrator.

Thank you for your feedback,

Wade

If you can change the IP address through the web or software interface for the VMAX, that is relatively new and a welcome change.

We were told by Digital Watchdog support the reason neither we nor our customer could access their DVR from an iPhone was because the app would only work on a WLAN connection. It did not affect Android and we supposed it was maybe a limit Apple put on the app. If this no longer so, then again it is a change from the way it worked before (since early last year), and a welcome one.

My opinions on the ACS and Pivot interface are our own based on experience with over a dozen different products, and from some of our customers in comparison to the previous brand we used before. If you have had a better feedback from your clientle, that's good for you and I'm not going to dispute that. Again, it's our own opinion and that of some of our customers.

But don't forget, I still said overall it seems to be a good product and the new HD Witness / DW Spectrum interface is a much needed improvement over Pivot and ACS.

Matt, when you say exploited, do you mean this is a security vulnerability? If the app is incapable of accessing the DVR, it would seem like a functional limitation? Can you clarify?

They have software for accessing the DW machines from an Apple computer. They also have the apps when using IPad or IPhone so I'm not sure what you mean since all devices are supported.

The Apple iOS apps for the VMax DVR do not allow the remote access of a DVR without being on the same LAN as the DVR itself.

UPnP 'fix' in 3.5.1 has disabled this essential feature.

The IP camera range are high quality units made by Probe Korea. The styling and build on the domes are excellent and they have great motorised lens models with excellent IR which don't have internal reflection problems.

They are certainly worthy of a review by IPVM.

Do a search and they seem to have a very good reputation and a good alternative to Hik/Dahua.

Besides Hik/Dah

Who are their strongest competitors?