An interesting follow up to our report from 3 weeks ago: Hikvision Upgrade Breaks ONVIF VMS Integration
The cameras I tested with originally had/have 5.4.5 on them and work as expected. I have been scouring through the forums trying to find any solution. The most recent cameras I puchased all have 5.5.0 on them. If there is anyone that can help me with a process to downgrade them to 5.4.5 there is $500 reward.
This is resolved after someone points out 5.5.0 disables ONVIF and the guy confirms that he is using Hikvision's cameras with Geovision's NVRs.
These negative experiences clearly hurt customers impacted and are likely to hurt future Hikvision sales as these customers factor in such problems.
And in the 3 weeks since we drew attention to this issue, Hikvision has done nothing publicly to clarify or help their customers being impacted by this nor have they attempted an explanation of why this very rare move was needed.
Feel free to counter that everyone should read release notes and everyone should test firmware prior to rolling it out, but the reality is that many or most do not. Hikvision either needs to recognize this or they can continue punishing their customers with their systems mysteriously breaking.
I think Hikvision and their customers would be better off avoiding that, but if Hikvision is determined to punish their customers, so be it.