What our experts say…
The Dowshu D-DVR 3032 digital video recorder has to be a serious contender for the heaviest DVR record (rack-mountable category), tipping the scales at a back-breaking 26kg.
It’s all in the heavy gauge casework, for inside the 3032 there is just a standard assortment of
off-the-shelf PC components, right down to its 2.4GHz processor, 256Mb of RAM, 720Gb storage (expandable to 3 terabytes) spread across three hard drives and the Windows XP (Embedded version) operating system. This appears briefly at boot up and remains mostly in the background once the DVR software is up and running.
The 3032 is one of six DVRs in the Dowshu range that share a common chassis. Our test machine is a 3000 series model with 32-channel recording capability (four, eight, 16 and 64 channel models are also available). Features common to the range include high-resolution recording with frame rates of up to 200 images per second using a proprietary codec called ‘Cubic’.
It has network connectivity and data backup to CD or DVD, USB devices and an external SCSI hard drive. Motion detection is available on each channel with up to five user-definable motion areas per camera. There is on-board PTZ control of compatible dome cameras and the PC architecture permits a great deal of flexibility, and with the appropriate adaptor card it can record up to 16 channels of audio in digital PCM quality.
One interesting feature is the inclusion of an external UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) that will keep the DVR running for several minutes in the event of a power cut and eventually allow it to safely power down, avoiding data corruption. The DVR also comes with a keyboard, mouse and rack mount fixing kit, software discs and manual.
Apart from the UPS and the heavy duty case there’s nothing too much out of the ordinary, but the clue to the 3032’s real nature lies in the extensive range of POS/EPOS recording facilities, and this machine has clearly been designed with the needs of the top-end retail sector in mind. We’ll look at that in more detail in a moment.
The case is a remarkable piece of engineering, armour plated in places and surprisingly vulnerable in others. Take the chimney-type vent positioned directly over the CPU cooling fan, for example. It’s not hard to imagine the disastrous impact a carelessly spilt drink could have…
Then there’s the heavy hinged front panel flap with a lock that appears to be of the type used to secure My Little Pony Secret Diaries. On the other hand no-one is going to run off with it, and the heavily braced steel case suggests that there is a better than even chance that data stored on the hard disk drives will survive the worst that man and nature can hurl at it.
The front panel flap opens to reveal a small backlit LCD status display, a couple of indicator LEDs for power and HDD activity, there’s also a master power/reset switch, a pair of USB ports and a vertically-mounted CD writer drive. Quite why it is on its side is hard to say since there is no shortage of space anywhere on the front panel and it makes loading and unloading discs a bit of a juggling act.
At first glance the rear panel looks fairly straightforward; the bottom half is akin to a normal PC with the usual cluster of ports, mouse and keyboard sockets, adaptor cards back panes and power supply module. In fact the only thing that’s out of the ordinary are a couple of strip connectors. These are for the removable interface panel, which carries all of the BNC sockets for the camera inputs. This is held in place by a couple of screws. It’s a clever idea and it should help speed up servicing, removal or replacement.
The socket panel supplied with our test machine suffered from a lack of loop-through outputs, which may or may not be a problem for some users. This facility appears to be an option on the 7000 series DVRs; the literature and Dowshu website (a dark, forbidding and unfriendly place…) is unclear if this is available for the 3000 series.
Inside the case the rear section is occupied by a standard PC motherboard and power supply whilst the front part houses all of the drives. Video recording functions are handled by two dedicated PCI expansion cards connected to the detachable rear panel interface by ribbon cables.
At the front of the case there are two support frames each capable of holding three hard drives, and another one for the optical drive. Our test machine was fitted with three HDDs, two 320Gb types both split into eight partitions, and one 80Gb drive that is used for the operating system, DVR application and utility software.
Setup and operation
After boot up the DVR program launches automatically and goes directly into Live View mode. The desktop is divided into three principle areas with the virtual monitor occupying most of the screen. Below that is the display mode ‘buttons’ with a choice of quad, 3×3, 4×4, 3+4, 2+8, 1+12, sequence and full screen views.
Along the bottom edge of the screen are the camera selector buttons, alarm and control selectors, and to the right of the screen is a time/date display, a set of function buttons, a secondary status display and an Instant Replay button. The front-end desktop is fairly straightforward and easy to use though unlike most DVRs it is not ready to run straight out of the box. It doesn’t go into a fail-safe default recording mode at first switch-on and requires quite extensive configuration. It’s only when you delve behind the scenes, into the setup functions that the apparent air of simplicity starts to wear off.
In order to access the machine’s control system it is necessary to log on as the Administrator and the first port of call is the Setup menu.
It is entirely graphical and takes over the virtual monitor display with icons representing a set of sub menus appearing along the bottom edge of the screen.
From left to right the first setup icon is concerned with POS configuration covering device ID, comms and protocols and options to change the display, font and colour. On this menu screen and most of the others the live view from the selected camera is displayed in a small window.
The second menu icon deals with the camera display; again the live image is displayed along with sliders for setting brightness, hue and contrast. There’s also a text edit box for composing the camera title. Surprisingly there’s no facility to alter its position on the screen and for some reason the setting for font size is on another menu. Although the DVR is supplied with a keyboard, on most setup menus it is possible to call up a mouse-controlled ‘virtual’ keyboard.
Motion detection setup is on the third menu icon. Detection areas – up to five per channel – are defined by ‘dragging’ the mouse to create a shaded rectangle. There are slider controls for setting sensitivity, pre and post alarm recording times and settings for alarm actions. The next icon is dubbed ‘General;’ and it covers setting audible alerts, ‘Intensive’ (alarm or motion) recording mode and resolution, various display options, alarm actions, housekeeping functions and camera sequencing.
The ‘Frame’ menu sets recording rate and image quality individually for each recording channel. Each camera has two sliders. The top one sets record rate and the bottom one network transmission rate. This is followed by drop down menu boxes for setting resolution (360 x 288, 720 x 288 or 720 x 576 pixels).
To the right of that is the image quality selector (Super Fine, Fine, Normal and Low) and at the end of the row is the Sensitivity adjustment. This is used to set how often a key frame is generated. It will depend on the nature of the scene – one with more movement will normally benefit from a higher setting, generating more key frames to capture more detail, though this will be at the expense of larger file size and faster disk usage.
Array of permutations
The next menu option is Schedule and this page is used to set up the DVR’s recording time and actions for each camera channel. There’s an impressive array of permutations and up to 32 schedules can be programmed for each 24 hour period, as well as changing responses to alarm and motion detector inputs and catering for special events, weekends, holidays and so on. The sensor menu handles the DVR’s alarm inputs and options to change contact status and variable delay/reset times.
Network settings are dealt with on the next menu and in addition to a set of port and protocol options there are facilities to enable remote diagnostics and two-way audio communications. If the DVR is going to be integrated with an existing network then it is necessary to exit the DVR program and restart the PC in Windows in order to access Network Connections in the XP Control Panel.
The Admin menu includes yet more housekeeping functions, such as log file recording (system, event, alarm, drive check) and log file management. This menu also provides access to the Windows XP Disc Management utility, USB drive removal and User/logon options.
The penultimate menu is a rather neat touch. It’s called Information and is for the benefit of installers and service engineers with space to store text notes. These could include details of hardware and software changes, important telephone numbers etc. The last menu is used to configure the DVR’s PTZ controls and protocols, select telemetry, interface and display options, set privacy zones, position presets and tours.
Having waded through the setup menus it’s time to look at the Search and replay options, and these are initiated by clicking on the Search or Instant Replay button. After clicking Instant Replay the DVR goes into reverse playback mode.
A set of VCR type speed and direction keys appear on the right side of the screen and above that there are buttons for the various Search and Archive functions. The latter is quite well thought out and reasonably simple to use, though not especially reliable. More about that shortly.
When exporting recordings to a CD (or USB drive) it is necessary to also include a copy of a Viewer utility due to the fact that the DVR uses a non-standard file format. The Viewer utility is recorded automatically but default, though this can be switched off if required.
A pair of sliders called Preview Search appears in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and these provide rapid access to any part of a recording made in the previous 24 hours. Clicking the Search button displays the same screen but without DVR playback.
The other Search functions are, from top to bottom, POS Search (when connected to EPOS devices), Backup Search (for archived recordings), Preview Search (generates thumbnail images of archived recordings), Object Search (post recording motion detection), Index Search (alarm activation) and Status Search (rapid to access to a recording using a timeline display). This area of the screen also contains buttons for exporting images to a printer or an external drive.
Some of the on-screen displays can also be a bit difficult to read – depending on the background image – and it would have been useful to be able to change their position. The record indicator, a tiny red spot in the top right hand corner of the monitor view can be hard to see, and live view options are surprisingly limited with no picture zoom or freeze etc.
Performance
Recording and playback on the DVR is all fairly painless – image quality at the highest resolution on the Super Fine setting is very good indeed with negligible noise or artefacts, good colour accuracy and a good range of playback speeds. Stepping down through the resolution and quality settings results in a noticeable drop in sharpness and an increase in edge noise, but it only becomes significant on the Normal and Low settings.
Backing up recordings to a blank CD proved to be a something of a hit and miss affair. On a couple of occasions it refused to recognise a blank disc in the drive work until after a reboot. Several test discs refused to play on one of our office test PCs. This behaviour is odd and unexpected in view of the fact that CD recording functions are handed by an external program (Roxio Disk Creator), which has a good track record for reliability.