Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This system is a very good system. Some of the issues you've read from other reviewers are true - there is essentially no documentation that comes with the system. They do provide some YouTube videos for the basic configuration, however there are a ton of features in the software that appear essentially undocumented. With some experimentation and exploration, I was able to figure out how all of the options worked. Once you've invested that time, you'll realize that you have a very complete, reliable video surveillance system. Installation: the toughest part of installing this system is running the Ethernet cables. That has nothing to do with this particular system - it's just something you have to endure when installing ANY camera system like this (wireless systems don't compare). In my particular house, I was able to find a location in my attic where I could drop all lines down to a cabinet where the NVR would live. Then, in my attic, I was able to run the Ethernet cables to all of the various locations relatively easily (soffits, garage ceiling, living room ceiling, etc). The most difficult run is one that goes to the outside of the house and needs to hang from a soffit. I determined the best solution there is to (a) drill the 1" hole from the outside in the soffit itself (mine is aluminum), (b) from the outside of the house, take a fishing pole and push it through the hole and angle it parallel to the roof of the house and push it in as far as possible, c) go up in the attic and route the Ethernet to that location - NOTE: this can be extremely difficult depending on the pitch of your roof (d) tape the Ethernet to the end of the fishing pole and then (e) go back outside and gently pull the fishing pole out. I then mounted a 2x4" to the underside of the soffit (see photo) and painted it the color of the house. I've read reviews elsewhere where they say you can't just mount it to the aluminum because strong winds will suck the camera up through the soffit as the house breathes during a storm. Setup: Once you have the NVR powered on, plugging in a camera was extremely easy. The cameras are powered from the Ethernet cable so there's only the one cable to run. Once you plug it in, it takes about 40 seconds for it to register in the NVR and it'll automatically show up as a new camera. You then can go in and set various options like camera name, position of the date/time on the screen, how you want it to record (constant or on motion only), etc. As I said previously, there are options for just about anything you can imagine needing to do, it's just unfortunate that they're not documented anywhere for you. TIP: one thing I found out was there are even more settings that you can control on each individual camera that are not accessible via the NVR. You have to plug in a laptop or computer into one of the free ports on the NVR and set the network settings on your laptop to be on the same subnet as the NVR and cameras. Once you've set that up, then you can just enter the IP address of a camera into your laptop's web browser and login to the camera itself directly using the UID/PWD (default is admin/12345). In there, you can control all sorts of things like the camera's exposure, contrast, white balance, etc. Once again, this isn't documented anywhere but extremely handy (and almost required in my case) to resolve issues. Video Quality: The daytime quality of FANTASTIC. Sharp, clear picture. At first, the night time video was pretty poor. I contacted support and we worked through several attempts at correcting it. It turned out that I had to take the steps mentioned above under "Setup" to remote into each camera and adjust several settings until my night time picture was much better. As I said above, this was a must for my situation - you may find the same in your case. Remote Viewing: The iPhone and iPad apps are AWESOME! I've found that this is the best way to view what's going on around your house - way better than the NVR or web interface itself. I did take the time to setup the dynamic dns because my ISP changes my public IP address periodically. Once again, no instructions are provided for this, but I did get what I needed from Laview's support via email. Support: because of the limited documentation (none), I've found myself needing to contact Laview's tech support quite a few times. I must say, they have been great to work with. Very responsive (they are west coast). They even called me via the phone without me asking - they wanted to make sure I got my issue resolved. Price: I purchased this on Amazon. NOTE: I highly-recommend you watch the price over a period of time. I purchased the unit for $999. Since then, I've seen it go up to $1499 for most of the time, however recently, it's been all the way down to $750. Overall: This is a fantastic security/surveillance system. I highly-recommend it if you are patient and don't mind putting a little effort/work into getting things completely setup the way you want. I wouldn't say that this system is for the non-techie user. As I said, it did require a fair bit of work and tweaking on my part to get it to work the way I wanted. Then again, I can assure you that it will provide basic functionality by unboxing and plugging in the cameras and going.