Product Reviews

Swann's DVR Guardian is a video capture device with four composite video inputs, allowing you to process video streams from four different digital security cameras simultaneously. If you like the idea of surveilling your domain from the comfort of your PC screen, the supplied software provides all the features you'd hope for: displaying all four pictures simultaneously, adjusting settings such as contrast and brightness for each camera feed, setting the storage device you want footage saved to, and so on. You can also set up motion detection on one or all of your cameras, and schedule when footage should be recorded.

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The remote function is where things really get fun. Tick a couple of boxes and the Swann surveillance software turns your PC into a video streaming server. As long as you leave your PC turned on, you can log in via the Internet from anywhere in the world to check either live or recorded footage.

We tested the DVR Guardian with Swann's own Bulldog security cameras (around £70), and for the most part everything went very well. Setup couldn't have been easier, and the software was easy to use, letting us flick from one camera to another, then back to the four-in-one view, with ease, and to set our camera recording (with slightly less ease - this fairly basic function could be simpler), play back recorded footage and so on.

Connecting to the camera over the Internet also worked fine, though annoyingly the browser plug-in that you have to install on your remote PC lacks a security signature, which made installation a hassle.

Niggles aside, this is a very good product that's easy to install, easy to use, and does what it says. And if the security of your home or business is at stake, £90 isn't too much to invest. Bear in mind that you'll also have to buy some cameras.