Hikvision Or Ubiquiti Video?

It's pretty clear the 2nd go round on video is targeted for their core customer base that wants to use an end to end Ubiquiti solution. Also, the new camera specs are not that much better or valuable than previous.

What are you looking for though? It might help us provide better alternatives.

hey john -

thanks for the reply. i suppose i was actually here looking for alternatives. i am looking for something relatively cheap for perhaps 5 cameras initially, growing quite a bit over time.

we had been told about how aggressive ubiquiti's prices are, but find a ton of alternatives with same or better specifications priced much cheaper (even with tax and freight, we can get 3MP Hikvision DS series with IR, etc).

i like the idea of an open system like blue iris, and as such am leaning toward something ONVIF compliant, which i have been told Ubiquiti isnt.

so, i guess my aim in the question is:

#1. find out if my initial take on ubiquiti's pricing and features is consistent with what the rest of the community finds, or i am missing one or more things.

#2. sort of an extension of #1, if my goal is something functional and low cost, why wouldn't i opt for a few hikvision units running blue iris, i.e., is this also perhaps not as easy as advertised / i am led to initially believe.

Thanks again John -- agreed on Sony or Axis, but the feature sets offered there are far superior to the highest end sku i can locate from ubiquiti (called "Pro" apparently, despite specs that are below what is broadly available from Hikvision and others for half the price). So, I agree with that numerically, but that doesn't tell us a whole lot, in my view, apples and oranges.

I have been told Blueiris does run on Hikvision NVR using RTSP on the camera -- please note, I have not tried this personally, I plan to shortly.

Cost / lack of cost on blueiris plus the ios apps and option to stream live to web is what i have generally liked in digging around blueiris. I am certainly open to other suggestions, but the notion of avoiding hardware vendor lock in is what most interests me.