SECURITYVIDEODIRECTSVD HD-TVI 1080P Dome Security Camera with Metal Housing and Great Night Vision Black

This is a great camera and has great features that make it a popular choice for installers and professionals. It is very clear for an analog camera. Its not High Definition since that is not possible. It is very close though.

Good cameras but I don't like the joystick thing. When you put this up on the side of your house then discover it has issues at night, well that's a problem. The joysticks don't work very well to begin with. Then at night the LEDs are massive overkill. They are far, far too bright and they are concentrated into a spot that looks like it's staring at the sun. The lights need to be diffused and not focused into a spot like that. If you're trying to use this like over a doorway at night people walking up to it will be so blasted with light that they look like a ghost, you can't make out any features on them at all. Even way up on the side of my house aimed out into my backyard it was far too bright. There needs to be a way to turn down the LED output. There may be a way to change the settings with the camera menus and joystick but having to climb a ladder at night to do so is uncool. Plus you have to take a little battery powered display up there with you as well. So it's very inconvenient to adjust these things. There needs to be a way to access and change the menu from remote, not right at the camera only. In the daytime they are really nice but the colors are backwards, green is blue and yellow is green. Or something stupid like that. Someone switched wires or programmed it wrong somehow.If I can figure out how to get the camera to be less sensitive to the IR lights at night but still function normally I will come back and bump it up a star.But having the only way to adjust it right at the camera and not from a remote location, that's an issue that I am not very happy with.It's default settings may be ok for like a big parking lot at a large business but for your backyard, not so much. The LEDs are massive overkill and it's impossible to see what someone looks like at night. I see need for a lot of improvements.It's not a bad camera, it's just, annoying in ways.. Plan on spending time outdoors in the dark messing with it.Update: (8/25/16)I took a chance and ordered a second one of these. It came in a few days ago and I put it up on the front of my house. It's performance is brilliant! It sees in the dark like it's daytime except everything is in B&W. The second camera, I couldn't be happier with it.The first camera, I'm pretty certain that it's crap. It doesn't work at night work a hoot. Because it worked so poorly in the dark I had turned out it's night vision feature and locked it to "color". When you set it to "auto" you can hear a relay or solenoid clicking rapidly and the video goes to complete poo as it clicks. The clicking is the IR cut filter being moved over and away from the lens. It won't stabilize and stay set in any particular mode. When I set it to "external" it blasts an intensely bright IR beam onto my lawn and that's all it will see. Just a very bright circle of light and all around the edges is pitch black. So it's utterly useless in night vision mode. When I set it to "color" it doesn't see the IR light at all in this mode. But it's lux level is sensitive enough that I can see a very, very grainy picture that's just barely enough to see if someone where walking around wearing a white shirt and waving a flashlight around. What I have to do is expect that my motion sensor LED yard light turns on if someone is out there (which doesn't work very well in the INTENSE HEAT that we are suffering. It's so hot at night that the yard light has a hard time recognizing the heat from a human and especially my dogs)I have tried EVERY setting on this camera and none of them help. I'm about 98% certain the camera is defective. But I'm afraid I waited too long and it's well past it's warranty. I had a very hard time with this camera because I have to climb an extension ladder at night, in the dark, by myself to go up on the side of the second story of my house to fiddle with the dorky little joystick that's inline. It would have been immensely more helpful if they had put a water proof jack on it so you can connect a LOOOOOOONG wire for the joystick where you could fiddle with it down on the ground and then disconnect the wire and cap the hole with a silicone plug. Another problem with the joystick, like in my case, when I have to mess with it up on the side of the house there's no way to do that without being in front of the camera which blocks it from where you want it to see. The IR lights reflect off of you right back into it, blinding it. And you have to carry a little LCD TV up on the ladder with your, trying to balance the TV on top of the ladder in the dark so you don't drop it 20 feet all while you fiddle with a dorky little joystick, well that's just horrible. So adjusting the thing at night is a nightmare.After seeing how exceptionally well the other camera works I got my phone and went through the menus of the new camera and took pictures of each menu screen so I could duplicate the settings from the new camera to the original camera. I went up on the ladder tonight and did a factory reset then I hit save and exit. I unplugged the power then powered it up and it was still a total crap picture. I went into the menu and set everything to exactly the same as the camera that's working perfectly. Still a crap picture. I also checked the firmware version on the two cameras and they are the same, "150623".. And again, I went through EVERY level and layer of the many menus and set them both up as identical. So I'm giving up on this particular camera. I'm going to swap it around with another one that I have over my front porch. That camera doesn't have to see in total darkness as I keep a light on on my front porch all the time so this messed up camera SHOULD work ok on the porch. I just hope the one on the porch doesn't have the same problem. I don't know because it's well lit there at all times so it hasn't ever run in night vision mode.Also after having the third camera give me such a magnificent picture in the front yard I ordered three more of them to replace older, smaller dome cameras that only see about 20 feet into the yard at night. The newest one can see an easy 150 feet like it's daytime even in total darkness. Everything is fully illuminated by the IR lights, it can see better than I can if I turn on my outside lights and try to look with my eyes.I really, really need to see everything around my house at all times because of a psychotic neighbor that has threatened to kill me at least three times. The guy has been harassing me since last year and the police have done nothing about him. I had the police come out 5 times in the last two days over the harassment and threats and still they do nothing. So I'm putting up MOAR CAMERAS!! I wish I could afford to replace them all at one time but that's just not possible. I have 16 assorted cameras up and most of them are pretty old and crummy. I have to replace them about three cameras every month. Eventually I'll have about 40 cameras around and inside of my house and I'm going with these. The one bad camera, well I messed up not sending it back right away but I didn't really know what I was doing and I figured it was just me doing something wrong. Now that it's too late to replace it I've finally figured out it's crap and needs to be switched out. I think it will be ok if I put it on my front porch. The other cameras I have coming in and have yet to purchase? Well if I find any of them not performing as they should I'm not messing around, I'll send them back right away.Live and learn I suppose.All in all, I think these are really great cameras as long as you don't get a dud. The joystick is really a royal pain because if your camera is waaaaay up on the side of your house, well good luck messing with it up on the ladder in the dark.. Despite the one dud that I got I did buy more of them and plan to buy many more over time. The price is very reasonable. I was angry that last one I ordered it was listed at $39.50 but when I ordered three more today they were listed at $39.50 again but when I put them in the cart the price jumped up to $42.50.. That was a d*ck move to bait and switch the price like that.And thirty day warranty? That's a bit d*ckish too. Why not 90 days? Or one year? Have you no more faith in your product than a thirty day warranty? My life is depending on these things. I'm not putting cameras up because it's fun or cool, there is a crazy man that has threatened to kill me and I need to be able to see if he's trying to sneak up on my house or if he tries to thrown poisoned food over the fence to kill my dogs. I expect these things to work as designed and as promised.Update - Feb 3, 2017After much more fiddling with settings I have finally gotten most of the cameras (I have eight of them now) to give me a good picture.One camera in particular has been a problem but I switched it with another identical camera and had identical results. The second camera had worked perfectly in it's previous location but when I put it aiming down at my backyard it did the same exact thing as the one I just took down. After much research it seems that most cameras have a problem with aiming them downward at too steep of an angle. But I don't have any other choice in placement, it has to be where it is and has to look downward where it does. Well, climbing the ladder over and over again and endlessly fiddling with the darn thing and I finally had a stroke of dumb luck and stumbled upon a setting that works reasonably well. It's not as good as the other cameras that don't use such a steep downward angle but it's acceptable. The other cameras are wonderful considering they are old technology and for the price, they are a bargain.One complaint I've had with these is the silly little joystick thingie in the cable. Getting to it to make changes as you try to find a proper setting can be a real problem, especially when you have your cameras mounted up on the second story of your house. I do not like climbing ladders.Well, I may have found a solution to this problem. I don't know yet if this will work or not but I've found a little gadget that you put inline on the video cable of your camera that allows remote control over the OSD menus. Of course it all depends on if the camera has an "Effio-E chip" made by Sony. The gadget is called an UTC (Up The Coaxial) controller. Amazon and ebay sell them, I found one on ebay for $10 with free 4 day shipping so I decided to give it a try, if it doesn't work it's not a big loss. I just ordered another camera that is typically used to read license plates and the UTC controller will work with it. I bought that camera because it can see through lights that would blind any other cameras. I have an extremely hostile neighbor who has threatened to kill me numerous times and his entire family harasses and taunts me daily, his entire family frequently tries to blind and or damage my cameras with extremely bright LED flashlights. The license place camera can see clearly even with the headlights of a car are shining directly into it, with this camera I can see and record them doing their bad deeds even when they try to hide behind blinding lights. I sure hope the UTC controller with work with THIS camera. Being that the description says it's a Sony and that it has the same little inline joystick the license plate camera has, I have high hopes. If I can access the menus of these cameras from inside my house and not have to do the ladder stuff anymore that would be excellent.The time has come for me to replace my ancient DVRs (three of them) but that's going to be expensive and take a long time, I'll have to spread out the purchasing of the new stuff over a two to three year time frame so for now I'm going to keep using what I have now.I still have plenty of very old cameras that I need to replace so for now I plan to buy six more of these cameras to hold me over for the next couple of years. The new license plate camera is an HD-TVI type so it will plug right into my ancient analog DVR but when I replace the DVRs it will work with newer, high definition stuff and I'll be able to get a 1080p picture from it then. Eventually I'm going to replace all my cameras with digital IP types and all of them will be a minimum of 1080p with many being 2K and 4K. But that's still a long way off. But until then these cameras will be fine.I did receive one camera that was DOA and Amazon let me return it and they refunded my money right away so I was able to order a replacement quickly. That went smoothy despite it throwing my plans off by a week while I dealt with sending it back and ordering another one. After a great deal of fiddling with that one problem location (it's the location, not the camera that's caused me problems) I did get it working well enough to be usable. For that I'm bumping it up a star from three to four. The only thing that sucks is that there is really very little information about the settings, what they mean, what they do, and all the consequences of the settings. It's pot luck, trial and error on getting them to give you good video. It took me months of messing with them to get them set right. Finding info on what all the menu settings mean and do, there is none. There's eleventy billion different kinds of cameras out there and every one of them is different and none of them provide you with comprehensive instructions if any at all. I guess they assume everyone that buys these knows what they are doing or maybe they just don't care if you get instructions or not.One major flaw I did find that I do not like is that if you use the digital zoom in the camera then all the other options are disabled such as the WDR, noise reduction, etc.. I wish I could have some of these cameras with a more powerful optical zoom such as 8mm-50mm optical zoom so I can see spots that are farther away but still be able to use the WDR and other back lighting options. If they would offer a camera just like this but in 8mm-50mm (or something similar) I would buy four of them RIGHT NOW.For $40 or so these are really pretty darn good analog cameras. I'll be buying six more of them over the next few months to replace really old, inferior and limited cameras. If you need a good camera at a bargain price, this will do it. Just be prepared to do a lot of fiddling with the things because they are a bit of a problem in certain situations. In a few weeks I'll update again to relay my experience with that little UTC controller I'm going to try soon.

I purchased 6 of these to replace the crap lorex cameras that are sent with there dvr.. and wow! Every camera I received worked perfectly and the image is very crisp. My favorite feature with these cameras is the Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) function. It brings out all the shadows from the picture and decreases all the over exposed spots!I would recommend this!

worked fine for about 24 hours. I bought this camera as a spare in case one of my cameras went bad and one did . I installed it and it worked fine for a day then it went black screen.

I like the camera features, set up was easy. I'm having issues with pixelation of part of images that move. I test myself walking towards my front door and I can't see my face due to heavy pixelating. I have changed color settings within my Q-See 8-Channel HD Analog DVR with 2TB HDD system. Interested in recommendation to make quality picture better.

I'll start out with some positives. The wide angle view is good. It's easy to install and the outside controls are convenient. However the camera itself isn't that great. The picture is not very colorful. It looks basically B&W. Night vision is poor to no more than 20 ft. With holes around the base it's not waterproof. You would need to caulk all around to prevent moisture intrusion. I wouldn't buy this again. We'll see how long this lasts.

I love the picture processing that makes grass look real. I bought the SVO 1000TVL Sony 1.4mp CMOS camera for backyard security. It has a nice wide view angle and color DSP which may be why the grass looks better than other cameras. In trying this camera with a home DVR (records CCTV not TV shows) the grass looked like it had more detail. The other camera made the grass look painted in, green patches, less black spots (contrast?) more "carpet" look. The main CON with this camera is the joystick, it is just down by the jacks, 2 feet away from the camera. You have to drill a big hole for the jacks and joystick to go thru or leave them outside. Would be nice to find the same camera with an RS485 connector to remote control the camera.

Great cameras. Excellent day/night picture. when using external place joystick and connections in weathertight box or drill 3/4 inch hole in overhang to fit it in behind camera. The price is exceptional for the quality.