101AV 16CH Security Camera System Hybrid HD H.265/H.264 5in1 DVR/NVR, HD-TVI/CVI/AHD/IP, HDMI/VGA Video Out, Phone APPs for Home & Office, Work w/ 5MP Lite Analog & 8MP Lite IP Camera, 2TB HDD(no PoE)

As someone who has used 101AV products for many years, I have been extremely pleased with the quality of their DVR's, up until now. I have had 3 16 channel DVRs and 4 8 channel DVRs spread out between Texas, Missouri, and Virginia, and the only problems I have had was a hard drive controller failure in one of the 8 channel DVRs after a lightning strike. Definitely not the fault of the product. The fact that the integral hard drive controller was the only damage speaks volumes for the quality of the device. Unfortunately, this meant I had to replace the entire unit. This unit has an all new interface and uses all new CMS software. I have spent several days trying to figure out a way to get all of the systems to work together under a single CMS instance with absolutely no success. I get the fact that time moves forward, advances are made, etc., etc., etc. But the fact that the new software is not backwards compatible with their older equipment is unforgivable. Now I am stuck with having to try to find some 3rd party software that will work with all of my equipment and if there is none to be found, then I have to decide if I am going to set up a separate monitoring system for this single DVR, since the old software will not work with it, or if I am going to have to replace every other DVR with the new version so I can keep all the monitoring one a single CMS. I am very disappointed in you 101AV!! Sad to say, after many years of using your products, if I am forced to replace all of my equipment to keep everything under a single CMS instance, it will not be your products I purchase.

I have talk to tech support probably 3 times in 2 years. They have helped every time I call. They are a great team and aways polite. The DVR I purchaced works very well. It is the best one I have out of 3 units.

I mostly really like the 2TB version of this 16 channel analog camera DVR. Installation was easy, the direct user interface is intuitive and well done, the mobile app was easy to connect and works well. The one place where things didn't work well was the web interface which required installing an app. The app required administrator access (not just to install) to the local system when run which is very bad in a business environment.Physical installation was smooth and problem-free. This DVR is replacing a OLD PC based unit and physically much smaller and more quiet. The connections to the analog cameras, power, monitor and mouse were flawless. The old system's USB keyboard and mouse connected instantly and were immediately recognized. No problems. Physical installation was pretty close to a drop-in replacement.The initial setup was easy to follow and all of the 10 cameras came up with their pictures. You might want to take a picture of the labels on the bottom for the serial number and model number. These are needed to register the DVR with the cloud service and not doing this was my one oversight in setting up the cloud account (to allow remote access). The direct user interface is nicely responsive.I installed the mobile app on my iPhone6 and used it to create my cloud account and connect the app to the DVR. This was a easy process that took only a few minutes to complete. I can access both the live video and recorded video from the app without any problems. The app experience is very good.I tried to setup the web connection for a person who wants to monitor video from their desktop PC. That was not so nice. The DVR wants to install a app which requires administrator access for the installation. That's no surprise, but what was is the requirement for administrator access to run. This is not good in this environment as most users do not have accounts with normal user permissions (for good reason). I was not able to find a way around this outside of making them part of the local administrators group on their PC. Not a very good solution and the only dark spot in this installation.Except for the web interface glitch the 101AV 16channel DVR has exceeded my expectations. It's been running for months now and after setup there have been no problems with the DVR. If not for the web app problem with privileges I think it would be a solid 5 stars. With the web problem it's only 4 to me. In all other areas this DVR exceeded my expectations.

Great Product and Great Installation Experience.Bought this 16ch Security DVR box from Amazon to replace another brand I bought ~ 10 years ago.This is a no brand name (101 AV inc.) but so far its great.Within 10 minutes of taking it out of the box, and hooking up my 8 old cameras, it was working. I could see all cameras working and the pictures were so much more clear than before.I did not even have to read the manual to get it working. Good thing, the printing was very small. Not for old folks.The user interface is way better than my old system. I used the included mouse to log in to make some set up changes.A little confusion occurred when I changed the password. It asked me to do something with "GUID." I called tech support which was just a few miles from me in Silicon Valley. Great people. Very good English. Think they were Taiwanese or Chinese which is great. I've worked in those countries and I love the people there.Roger in tech support told me to ignore the GUID stuff. Very happy to do that.Then I set it up on my home network. Gave it the IP address of my old system. No problems.Set the system to record only when they detect motion. Alternative is to have full time recording.Then I went to my laptop, and typed in the IP address into a browser. But I got nothing. Roger at tech support said to only use Internet Explorer. Chrome and Firefox would not work due to security issues and probably not allowing the plug in to run.With IE running and the IP typed in where you type in URLs, it installed a plug in and I could see the 8 cameras working perfectly.Very simple. There is also a CD which contains software so you don't need to use IE. I may look at that someday. But it was not needed to get things working.Then I wanted to see the cameras on my iPhone. Could not do this with the old system.Took a few minutes to load the app called Guarding Vision. The manual tells you about that. Typed in a few things, pointed my iPhone at the model / serial label on the bottom of the box. Had to create another password. Then I could see my cameras on my iPhone.Since this all went so fast I thought I would explore the user interface. Actually it is very good.Its very well organized and easy to move around with the mouse.I looked at some recorded video and was able to see myself walking in front of the cameras a bit earlier. This was fairly easy and smooth.So this is a great product, and I think the company must be pretty good.I had looked at the Samsung branded box but there were complaints about installation and user interface and reliability. So I went with this box. Very happy so far.