Specifications

16 Channel DVRs
www.benchmarkmagazine.com
3
The DVR uses the now almost standard H.264
compression algorithm for recorded video.
Available resolutions are 704 x 576, 704 x 288
or 352 x 288. Record rate is 400fps. Now for the
good news; it’s 400fps at all resolutions, so this
truly is a real-time DVR!
The SRD-1670DP has a clean and simple
fascia. The left hand side is home to the DVD
rewriter, while the centre of the unit includes a
jog/shuttle dial with a blue LED ring. It’s a small
touch, but it does give a quality feel, and end
users like that. Consumer brands don’t spend a
fortune on such touches for nothing, so it’s good
to see security products following suite.
There are two main blocks of buttons. The
first is the 16 channel select buttons, and the
second includes general control and playback,
as well as a touchpad for menu navigation.
The recorder is supplied with a manual. It is
fairly well written and covers most of what you’ll
need to know. There is also a mouse included,
and an infrared remote control unit, as well as
SATA connection leads for external devices.
The menu structure is straightforward. It
differs from the traditional Samsung menus
we’ve seen in the past, but before you wonder
why they’d change it, the good news is that it’s
better! Navigation is clear and easy, and the
settings are simple to control. Inputs are
individually configurable, and you do have to set
each one. Thankfully, when it comes to setting
schedules, you can apply global changes, which
made the configuration very quick. Additional
functionality such as alarm handling, motion
detection and search facilities are simple and
work well.
Video quality has eight settings; thankfully
Samsung has had the good sense to not try and
come up with 8 descriptions. Instead they vary
from Level 1 (lowest) to Level 8 (highest). The
only anomaly is that the machine offers 4CIF,
2CIF and CIF resolutions, but the menu refers to
them as D1, Half D1 and CIF. It’s not an issue as
the specification sheets are very clear about
what you actually get!
At Level 8 in 4CIF mode, the image quality is
excellent. Indeed, many would be hard-pressed
to differentiate it from a live input. Being able to
record in real time across the board might have
an impact on storage capacity, and installers
offering the highest quality could need to fill the
unit’s five HDD slots, but if you’re after real time,
video, it’s worth it!
Dropping to Level 5 in 4CIF doesn’t show
much deterioration, and Level 3 only shows
signs of compression in bland areas of tone.
Even at Level 1, identification is still possible,
and we have seen worse images from some
DVRs on their so-called high quality settings.
Obviously, dropping to CIF resolution does
have a slight impact, but nowhere near as much
as you might expect. At Level 8 the images are
similar to what you’d expect from a decent 4CIF
MPEG-4 images, and for a CIF resolution that
shows that the H.264 implementation has been
done with care. At around Level 4 compression
is obvious, but not to the degree that it renders
the image unusable. Even at Level 1, you are
getting images that are more than good enough
for general surveillance!
Verdict
The Everfocus Paragon 264x4 is a very good
machine, and if we’d been sent a manual and a
power lead – and if the manual had decent
instructions about fitting the drives – we’d have
been happier. That aside, the GUI, whilst not
difficult to use, isn’t as intuitive as some of the
others. However, you can forgive it that because
of its performance.
Honeywell’s HRDP16D is a basic general
purpose DVR. When Benchmark established the
base specification for what the DVRs needed to
achieve, the unit was accepted as the spec
seemed to indicate that the unit would provide a
higher frame rate for high resolution images. It
doesn’t, and with a maximum rate of 50fps for
4CIF images, it can’t compete in this company.
For this reason it receives a lower rating. Against
run-of-the-mill DVRs, it’s certainly a nice unit.
Mitsubishi’s DX-TL5716E has been around for
a fair few years now, and whilst it’s still capable,
it does seem to have been left behind by the
pack! Given that in its day it was the ‘cooking’
version of the powerful DX-TL5000, it was
certainly once way out in front in terms of
performance. It has now been overtaken, and is
crying out for a performance boost.
The Samsung SRD-1670DP packs in a lot of
performance given its price, and it uses that
performance to deliver the type of image quality,
in real time at all resolutions, that you’d expect
from a higher end DVR. Compression is very well
implemented, and the GUI is simple and
intuitive. It’s hard to find fault with the unit.
Vista’s QP16 has some good points; it equally
has a few points that could be improved on. The
noisy fans rule it out for some applications, and
a reworked GUI would give it a more updated
feel. However, the performance suffers if the
image quality is reduced to its lowest level, and
that puts it behind a few others in the test.
Best Buy –
Samsung SRD-
1670DP
The SRD-
1670DP
represents
where
mainstream DVRs will be
going in the near future. It
has power, high image
quality, a simple GUI, and
is built to a high quality. It
achieves all of this in a
rather under-stated way.
It is interesting that the
two best performers in the
test – Samsung and
Everfocus – were both
relatively new DVRs. In
recent times, processing
capabilities have moved
on, and the result is that
newer units are able to
fully exploit that additional
performance. The SRD-
1670DP, however,
squeezes a little bit more
out of it, and that makes it
the Best Buy!
pp2-3_000_Benchmark_feb11 11/02/2011 15:16 Page 3