Appreciate the response, will avoid buying it and keep looking around! I dont care as much about the DVR, would rather a monitor actually for live viewing, to see whos at the door (which is downstairs) instead of having to go down stairs, and look through the peep hole.
You would need a monitor for the DVR anyways (at the least for the initial set up and settings). Its most convenient to have a designated monitor for live viewing and for playback. You can get a non recording "quad" for live viewing only, but you can get inexpensive DVRs nowdays that it makes more sense to just get a DVR. I would generally get 500GB for 4 channel systems and 1TB Harddrives for anything 8 channels and up. It gives you longer recording time. You can also buy a hard drive yourself and put it in if you want to swap out the harddrive (not very hard at all). Just make sure the HD is compatible with the DVR (example: Seagate, 7200 rpm, 32 cache, SATA, etc) Xerobull, like you mentioned you can get siamese cables for power+video. If you want to run Cat 5 wires anyways. You might want to consider NVRs (network video recorders). These NVRs and the "IP" cameras cost a bit more however. Also when your planning the wiring, you should also consider whether to power each camera individually with a DC (or AC) adapter, or to use a power supply box (4 channel, 8 channel, etc) with the appropriate amount for amperage. An IR camera will need more amperage than a day/night camera.
