But is it worth the money? You decide. Although you can save a considerable amount of money by selecting an embedded DVR, you may also give up some functions and/or quality.

There are basically a lot more limitations with the embedded and the thing it lacks may or may not matter to any given customer.

In early January I went on a service call to one of our oldest and dearest customers to extend the archive time. He wanted to be able to archive up to 30 days of video at any given time. We made an estimation of possible usage and set the dvr to record on motion detection. This customer started out with us about 9 years ago with an 8 channel, luckly enough for this customer they listened to us about having no way of expanding for additional channels on an embedded. After choosing a PC based 8 channel DVR originally they have now expanded to a 20 channel dvr and are happy with their system. I just visited the same customer on un-related services and checked the dvr and noticed that after the approximate 54 days the dvr's hard drive was only 81% full meaning they will have a re-estimated 65+ days or archive time on 20 channels. That's great considering the settings are set at the highest of the selections and resolutions. This customer swears this system has paid for itself already and has been approached by local law enforcement because of the many cameras POV. This customer has unfortunately had a lot of success with his dvr and has fired a ton of employees because of it. I say unfortunately because no one wants to find out they are being ripped off but better to know than not is the answer given time and again.

Let your budget, conditions and needs determine the system for you and you can not go wrong.