Samsung SRN-1670D NVR Review

The recorder market has become an ultra competitive mass of products and technology vying to be the leader. With the costs of IP recorders falling over the last few years, the uptake of IP has increased. Some innovative features, such as monitor outputs, have been added to these products to help with the migration from analogue to IP.

The SRN-1670D is a 16-channel recorder boasting a monitor output, an in-built DVR writer, and USB mouse support. It can record H.264 cameras at up to 3MP resolution and at a real-time (25ips) refresh rate.

Three-megapixel recording
The very latest cameras support higher resolutions than HD (1,920×1,080). To make use of these cameras and see the benefits of these higher resolutions, we need recorders that can record at these ultra high resolutions. This recorder certainly does that. Full three-megapixel (2,048×1,536) resolution is recorded in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Real-time recording
When we think back to the darker days of analogue recorders, we all remember the slower refresh rates. Instead of the smooth images we have today, it was almost like stop-motion footage.

The SRN-1670D supports real-time recording at true 25ips at all of its supported resolutions, from 640×480 up to 2,048×1,536. Having true real-time recording is a bonus, especially for alarm scenarios.

To really show off, you can run all 16 cameras at up to 3MP resolution, 4Mbit/s bandwidth, and the SRN-1670D will simply tick over and record them all in real-time.

HDMI and VGA monitor outputs
One of the historical drawbacks of replacing analogue recorders (DVRs) with IP recorders (NVRs) has been the lack of monitor outputs from the NVRs themselves.

The SRN-1670D gives us the option of either an HDMI output for HD monitors or a VGA output for PC monitors. We can now have a dedicated desk or rack monitor directly connected to the recorder, just as if we were using an Analogue recorder.

An added benefit of these outputs is their lack of upscaling.

USB mouse support and DVD writer
Along with monitor outputs, analogue DVRs have had the historical edge over their IP counterparts by often having a joystick controller that allows an operator to manage the recorder very easily and export to DVD. Historically, we have been able to access NVRs only via the network and download our footage to a PC before exporting to hard drive, USB stick, or DVD.

The SRN-1670D has USB ports at the front, with a generic plug-and-play mouse driver included. We can therefore take a standard USB mouse, plug it into the port, and take control of the unit in much the same way we control DVRs with a joystick. It even features an internal DVD writer, enabling us to export footage on the fly. The burner supports R and RW formats, giving us more than 4GB per disc to export footage — certainly enough space for serious incident backups.

IR remote control
A really nice feature from Samsung is an IR receiver in the NVR. We can make use of a remote control (in the box) to change the camera channel on our monitor. This certainly is a good feature, because we are all used to using remote controls with our TVs, so it is a nice touch here.

Build quality and accessibility
Straight out of the box, the recorder feels weighty and fairly sturdy. There is no rattle or flimsiness.

The DVD drive has an ejecting tray, rather than the slimline units you find in products like Macbooks. The tray is very sturdy and rigid. Most we have seen are flimsy and prone to breaking, so we were impressed with the build quality here.

One of the first things an engineer may have to do with an NVR is add extra hard drives to it to ensure storage is sufficient. A lot of new NVRs have easy access to their drive bays; some even support hot-swappable drives.

Unfortunately, getting to the SRN-1670D’s drives is a lot fiddlier. There is no quick, easy way to get to the drives; we need to remove some bodywork. This was a bit disappointing, because it goes against the trend here. (Even having rear access to the hard drives would save time.)

Once we removed the necessary screws, getting to the drives was simple enough. There is an array of slots and cables, and it is simple enough to add drives into the recorder from this point onward.

Web interface and setup speed
With hard drives installed and everything plugged in, the unit is actually quite quick to boot. We were expecting a good couple of minutes before being able to go about configuring the recorder, but we were pleasantly surprised that it took only 80-90 seconds at most before we were in.

The interface is cleverly segregated. When you log in and install the ActiveX plugin, you are taken to the Live screen. From here, you can view single or multiple camera images and control any PTZ cameras on your system.

It is easy to navigate through the options here, select camera numbers, control them, and bring up the respective OSD menus. The tabs at the top right of the screen help us navigate to various other sections of the menu, such as searching for footage and the configuration of the recorder.

Searching and playing back footage is really easy. We simply click the Search tab at the top of the screen, and we are presented with some search options. We have a graphical time/date on the lefthand side, and we then have our main footage area on the righthand side, where our footage will play. At the top, on the left, we have a Capture option, enabling us to download footage to our PC.

We found the setup section really easy to navigate and very quick to accept our settings. Each section that needs configuring (System, Cameras, Recording, Alarms, and Network) has a graphical icon next to it — a nice touch making the menu system easier to navigate.

We get all the standard options you would expect to configure, such as user information, basic system, adding cameras, setting recording, and network infomation. As a nice touch, we can even add holiday dates. (We can set up bespoke recording on a bank holiday, for example.)

Image quality
We tested the NVR with the Samsung SND-7061 camera. We stated the compression and refresh rate for both live and recording. The recorder then did exactly what it says on the tin — our desired live and recording rates were parsed through, and we were very impressed. We even tried to set up vastly different rates for live and recording; the NVR simply did as we commanded. Very impressive.

We also have to say that the HDMI output is excellent. The picture quality on our 24-inch LCD monitor is amongst the best we have seen from any of the NVRs on the market.

Additional features
We tried a number of mice, and they nearly all worked. All of our plug-and-play mice worked straight away. We were a bit devious and used one of our seven-button Logitech mice (which usually requires software drivers) to see if the NVR would work with it. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t, but generic three-button USB mice work fine.

The DVD burner is easy to operate, as well. We always make it a point to use branded DVDs for footage backup — you generally get far fewer dud discs, and their quality is higher than unbranded discs. We used Sony, TDK, and Memorex rewritable discs. The recorder was happy to work with any of them, and we were able to burn about 10 minutes of footage quickly and easily.

The verdict:
The build quality of the NVR is very good. The configuration is very straightforward and very quick. We really like the interface of this unit.

It doesn’t say so in any of the paperwork, but during our tour of the setup menu, we discovered that the recorder does actually support ONVIF cameras. Unfortunately, we do not know what version or to what extent. Nevertheless, this is an excellent feature, since ONVIF has become more and more important.

The only real drawback to the NVR is the lack of an easy way to access the hard drive bays. Most NVRs do offer a quick way for engineers to add/replace drives, and we were expecting this to be the case here. For more experienced engineers who are used to having to remove bodywork to get to hard drives (as per the analogue days), there shouldn’t be any complications here.