Security Board

Should I purchase the card and software and build my own digital video recorder or buy one pre-built?

It is much better to purchase a DVR system pre-built than to build one yourself. There are many compatibility issues with DVR cards and related software. They are very sensitive to the type of motherboard in the computer, the cpu, the memory, even the video card makes a difference! You don't want to be running any other software on the computer that your DVR is running on so you really should have a dedicated computer anyway.

Aha. I assumed so. Thank you.

You are welcome.

Plus the problems with building your own pc based dvr system is the warranty usually when you purchase a prebuilt camera system the warranty would be inclusive covering hard drive, motherboard graphics card etc. And your downtime would be much less rather if you had to take care of it.