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What our experts say …
It is a measure of the resilience of the VHS video recording format that it is still going strong after more than a quarter of a century. The imminent demise of VHS has been forecast many times, yet it has managed to see off more than half a dozen rival video recording formats in the commercial and domestic arenas. But has its time finally come? Probably not. VHS is likely to be with us for a few years, but it has been clear for some time that analogue tape has had its day and the future lies with digital technology and disk-based recording systems.

However, while digital video recorders have been around for a few years now, and for much of that time outperforming VHS, tape-based recording has enjoyed two significant advantages – cost and convenience – but not for much longer. The Vista Solo from Norbain is the first digital video recorder to be priced to compete directly with VHS time lapse VCRs. It is actually cheaper than some comparably specified models.

Assessing convenience is a little more difficult. There is no doubt that VHS cassettes are very easy to use, and being a removable medium simplifies archiving, transportation and duplication. But disk wins hands down when it comes to accessing images – no lengthy delays as the tape winds through – moreover tapes wear out and need to be replaced periodically, they are also bulky and require careful management and storage.

The Solo records digitally encoded video onto an 80 gigabyte hard disk drive (drives up to 250Gb are supported); the drive is mounted in a simple caddy so it can be removed but there is no direct provision for archiving recordings other than leaving them on the disk, where they reduce the amount of space available for new recordings. It's one of the few advantages tape has left, and even that is likely to disappear as the cost of recordable DVD systems continues to fall.

Vista Solo's main selling point is that it is a simple single-channel video recording device, designed as a plug-for-plug replacement for almost any standard time-lapse VCR. It can be used with a multiplexer, quad or single camera source and the headline feature is a maximum recording duration of 1497 hours! At the slowest recording speed and lowest quality setting, that equates to an impressive 617 days and six hours.

There are actually three quality settings (Standard, Medium and High) and 11 recording speeds, from 50 frames per second down to 0.1. So it easily meets and exceeds market demands for 960-hour recording and the ability to provide more than seven days of coverage (on the standard 80Gb drive) with the equivalent of S-VHS picture quality. Unlike many other digital video recording devices which use motion JPEG (M-JPEG) or MPEG compression, Solo utilises wavelet recording. This is a complex and highly efficient technique for compressing data and it eliminates the characteristic blocking artefacts and picture freezing that occur at high compression levels or when there is excessive noise or errors in the M-JPEG/MPEG datastream. Highly compressed wavelet recordings just look a bit fuzzy in areas where there is movement or a lot of fine detail. The downside is that wavelet recording is not as widely used as M-JPEG/MPEG, which we suspect makes it difficult to export or archive recordings from the Solo to other playback/ recording devices and PCs. Despite that obvious shortcoming, Solo stacks up well against a conventional time-lapse VCR. It can record continuously, overwriting data on the disk as it is filled up. It has a simple set of alarm functions, search facilities, multi-speed playback in both directions, a recording timer and the disk drive is 'hot-swappable' – drives can be exchanged while the unit is switched on.

The alarm functions are controlled by an external trigger and when activated, Solo switches to the selected alarm recording speed for a set period; an internal alarm buzzer sounds, 'Alarm' is displayed on the monitor output and the recording is protected from being overwritten. Solo is compatible with all leading makes of multiplexer and is remarkably compact.

Externally there is no mistaking the family resemblance with other Vista products and some thought has clearly been given to the controls to make them as accessible and operator friendly as possible. The main record/playback functions are controlled from a set of buttons in the centre of the front panel. They are the equivalent of the transport keys on a VCR and they are big, blue and shaped for the functions they represent. A cluster of buttons on the right side of the fascia double as picture search and frame step controls, and for navigating the on-screen menus. On the left there is the disk drive caddy, held in place by a simple key-operated locking mechanism.

Immediately to the right of the drive bay is a small blanked off slot, which happens to be exactly the right size for a Compact Flash memory module. The most logical application for this would be for downloading still pictures or short video sequences onto a memory card, and with capacities of 500Mb and 1Gb now available it would greatly simplify transporting images to a PC, video projector or printer. It's not clear if this is an abandoned feature – possibly due to file handling problems imposed by wavelet recording – or whether it is advanced planning for a future model.

The back panel is refreshingly sparse. There are two BNC sockets on the far left for the video input and output connections. Next to that is a group of three nine-pin D-Sub connectors, one for an RS-232 serial port for external control and software upgrades. The other two are for external connections to alarms and multiplexers that use VEXT synchronisation. In the centre is a socket for the external 12v mains power supply module and on the far right ventilation slots for a surprisingly noisy cooling fan. Inside the metal case most of the left side is taken up by the hard disk drive enclosure while on the right is a single chip-encrusted PCB that connects to the disk drive and front panel controls and displays by a couple of short ribbon cables.

Installation doesn't take long and it's ready to run on the defaults but in most cases it will be necessary to set time and date and configure recording speed and quality and all this is done from a set of on-screen menus. There are two levels of access; a standard set-up menu from which most basic operating parameters are set, and a password-protected Advanced menu, which covers disk management and maintenance, picture adjustment, security settings and resetting the unit to its factory defaults.

The main on-screen display is called up by pressing the menu button then the Enter key. There are five options, Time/Date, Alarms, Timer Settings, Record Settings and Display Settings. Selecting Time/Date brings up a sub-menu with options for changing the display formats and setting the time, date and region; the latter controls the automatic adjustment for daylight saving time. The Alarms sub-menu has 'switches' for enabling an external alarm connection and the internal buzzer. Recording times, duration and recording quality are set on the Timer menu.

The Record Settings menu has four options for selecting colour/mono/auto operation, recording speed; alarm recording speed (same options as normal recording) and video quality (standard, medium or high). The Display Setting menu has switches for showing time and date, recording capacity, last alarm activation and recording speed. The Advanced menu has a further eight options under the headings Disk Overwrite, Disk Maintenance, Auto Delete Mode, Adjust Picture, Front Panel Lock, Factory Settings, Change Password and Firmware Upgrade. Disk Overwrite determines what the recorder does when the disk is full; the choices are no overwrite, overwrite once or continuous overwrite.

Disk Maintenance has three options: Delete, Undelete and Erase (permanent delete). Auto Delete programmes the Solo to wipe any archived data more than a pre-set number of days old, which can be set from seven to 99. The Picture Adjust menu has controls for setting brightness, contrast and saturation, the front panels controls can be disabled from the Panel Lock menu and the next two menu selections are self-explanatory in that they restore the Solo to its factory defaults and allow the installer or administrator to change the Advanced menu password. The final option on the Advanced menu allows the Solo's firmware to be upgraded when it is connected to a PC via a serial comms cable.

Normal recording and playback functions are largely intuitive but it takes a while to get used to the nuances of digital recording. Although access to any part of a disk recording is theoretically much quicker than spooling through a tape, the designers of DVRs rarely make it as easy or as straightforward as it should be. The problem is to show the operator precisely where they are within a recording. Tape is a linear medium and you can see at a glance by looking at the tape reels, or tell instinctively from the sound the rewind/fast wind motor is making where the tape is on its travels. Disk recorders lack these important clues, which puts greater emphasis on the time/date counter.

This is fine if you're searching through a recording covering a period of just a few hours or even a day or two, but with the capacity to store data covering several weeks, better search methods are needed. Solo has a simple Search Filter facility for inputting start/stop times and dates but it is slow and ponderous. A better solution would be some kind of 'timeline' type display and simple to use navigation controls – such as a jog/shuttle dial.

Performance-wise it's misleading to make too many direct comparisons between analogue tape and digital disk recording but with a resolution of 720 x 576 pixels, at the lowest compression (highest quality) settings the picture is noticeably sharper and more detailed than the better S-VHS video recorders. S-VHS can manage to resolve around 380 to 400 lines; in those terms the Solo has a horizontal resolution in excess of 470 lines. Even on the medium compression, setting picture quality is better than VHS.

What the manufacturer says ...
The Vista Soloâ„¢ digital video recorder is the first truly viable VCR replacement. A single channel DVR, Vista Solo combines modern high quality digital technology with the functionality and ease of use of the familiar VCR, and at a very affordable price.

Offering recording speeds of up to 50 images per second, the Vista Solo delivers high quality images the match of any sophisticated DVR. When recording in a comparable 24hr time-lapse mode (five pictures per second), the Vista Solo provides seven days, 17 hours of storage to its internal hard drive. Recordings are saved to a single 80GB removable hard drive, supplied as standard. The unit works with quad, multiplexer, switcher, matrix or single camera applications.

The Vista Solo eliminates all the drawbacks traditionally associated with its VCR predecessor such as lengthy tape searches, time-consuming and unreliable tape management, problematic tape storage and security, and degraded images. A simple replacement to a user's existing VCR, migrating to the Vista Solo has no impact on the rest of a user's existing CCTV installation. Compatible with all leading multiplexers, the Vista Solo includes VEXT output for easy multiplexer integration.

The Vista Solo is one of the easiest to use DVRs available on the market. The unit features straightforward operation time lapse, alarm and scheduled record modes with one button searches and simple on-screen menus to quickly retrieve recordings by date, time or alarm. Other functions include fast forward and reverse functions, password protection, overwrite protection, HDD full and the ability to schedule variable record rates for both record speed and image quality, depending on day of week and time of day.

The Vista Solo is the ideal solution for existing CCTV applications which would otherwise replace an existing faulty or worn out traditional TL VCR machine with a new one. Equally, the Vista Solo is suitable for all new single channel users of CCTV. This includes all small to medium sized retail, warehousing, office and commercial premises.

The Solo is available with Vista's highly regarded five-year product warranty (excludes hard disk).