We need a basic CCTV system for a shop. It's more for discouraging petty theft and keeping an eye on the shop when we're in the store room. We're not necessarily expecting to identify anyone accurately from the system. And the shop only stocks reasonably low value items so I can't imagine anyone is going to be tracking down the little scr0tes even if we were able to identify them. We don't need any kind of motion detection, PTZ, night vision/IR, weather proofing or anything like that. 3 or 4 cameras max will be enough. So in summary pretty basic requirements.

I had intended to go with a basic Dlink IP camera set up. I've played with the Dlink cameras and software before, and it's only okay but seems to do the job. But PBTech stocks Dlink stuff around the corner from us, and for this local support is more important than necessarily getting the best price. By the time you add 3-4 cameras, a DVR/NVR and storage or a dedicated PC, a POE switch, the cabling, and my time mucking around getting it all set up, you're looking at the thick end of $700 or $800 minimum even with basic cameras.

Jaycar however has a couple of interesting package deals on CCTV. They don't seem to be IP based, but you can access the DVR via a network connection so you probably end up with most of the net benefits. I'm looking at the following options:

- Economy network DVR kit
- 720p network DVR kit

Obviously the basic package is a pretty low-res set up, but at $400-ish seems to offer an awful lot of bang for buck. The higher end $1000 set up is still cheaper than a like-for-like Dlink package and (I hope) just out of the box set up.

My experiences with cheap Jaycar stuff has been mixed. Some things do exactly what you need them to, while others are actually pretty flakey and you end up chucking it.

Any views? Is the basic kit going to be any good, or not worth the money? Is more than doubling the price to the higher end kit going to provide double the benefit?