ZoneMinder Forums

Hi,
I have a system with 2 PCI Bt878 (PICO2000) cards from DealExtreme.

They work well but because I want a good resolution and frame rate I just have at the moment 2 cameras per card. So I need a card with more chips so I can have better FPS. I need also 16 channels, so I could buy two 8 channels cards or one 16 channel card.

Any suggestion where to buy a cheap 8-16ch card with 4 to 8 chips?

I purchased generic 8 chip 878 cards from China on Ebay for less than $50 each a few years back. These came with heat sinks on the chips. I've used these cards now for over 8 years with no issues. It was the shipping and card that totaled $50 USD. You want to look for one chip one video connection on the boards as multiple video single chips just split up the video. You can try to use two of these for 16 channels. I have never tried this as once you start to capture 8 feeds with color you are pushing the CPU a bit.

Here's a generic 8 chip 8 port video card for $55 USD on Ebay including shipping.

[url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/8-CH-Channel-Re ... 43adcc1698[/url]

You will need to purchase heat sinks for this card as the chips get really hot. I still have a separate cooling fan on my Zoneminder box just for the CCTV card.


That said you are pegging the practical limits of analog cards / analog resolution with these cards.

That said I have no problems running 8 analog (Optex combos) at 640X480, color at 30 FPS on my core duo with 4 Gb of memory. 640X480 though is only SD and HD is very nice these days.

What chips has this card you bought/ posted?

I contacted the seller to make sure it's the Conexant A878 and he said that the chips have written "25878".

After a search in google by "conexant 25878" i saw:


So I think it's the A878....