Camera License Pack - having to pay double!

[pzeros]

I was happy and cheerful as I bought my new Synology 109. ... however the moment is now over!!

I just found out that the license pack costs just as much as the Synology 109. I am not happy having to pay double just to utilise the built-in functions. The cost of the licenses should be a lot lower!

For you guys out there trying to find out the cost of the License Camera Pack, well here they are:

1 license = USD 60
4 licenses = USD 200

Synology: I suggest the cost of camera licenses be incorproated into the selling price of the unit (ie Synology 109, etc). This way, not only it will be more transparent for buyers but also it will be cheaper than buying the licenses separately.

[HarryPotter]

You have to post the WHOLE facts:

1 camera license is included for free!

Only if you want to add more than 1 cam you have to buy additional licenses.

viewtopic.php?f=82&t=13219&p=56135&hilit=camera+license#p56135

[bgaidan]

And you have to post the "WHOLE facts":

There was no mention of additional charge for this feature when most of us bought our units. In fact, until a recent firmware upgrade I was able to run multiple cameras without issue. Now I'm expected to pay nearly 50% more of the cost of the system itself in order to get the full functionality that I thought was included in the first place?!?

As I said in my other post, I have bought and convinced others to buy over a dozen different products from Synology. This recent experience has me greatly questioning my own actions.

[rodef]

1 camera license is included for free!

It's not free, it's part of the purchase price.

[Joshuaw]

Hello All,

The camera licenses were not required during the testing phase of Surveillance Station. This is the change you are noticing.

Cheers,
Joshuaw

[bgaidan]

So why choose to charge us an additional fee for something that we all thought was part of the software that was included with our purchase?

Before I chose a NAS, I did a lot of research. Part of that research led me here to these support forums and the information pages on your site. The included surveillance station was a key selling point for me and ultimately led to me choosing Synology over the dozens of others on the market. Had I known that I was going to have to pay an additional $200-240 for a feature that was available for no charge at the time I purchased my system I probably would have chose something else....and I certainly wouldn't have recommended Synology to so many others. And the fact that I was able to use my 407 with multiple cameras and now all of a sudden I'm not after a firmware upgrade is even more disappointing.

Do the right thing, Synology! Stop extorting this additional fee out of your customers to unlock a feature that should be available right out of the box!!

It is costing you a whole lot more in lost hardware sales than it will ever make you in license sales!

[ZwaaiHaai]

First of all, thank you Synology-guys to reply also in these critic topics. This forum is a great pro for the Synology products.

Reading the product specifications made me think that the DS209 supports and includes 5 webcams. Turns out it only includes one.
However I did not read deep enough I still feel a bit dissapointed and somehow cheated. This feeling stops me from buying that license.
A part from that, in my opinion the license cost are way to high.

I think that Synology customers are willing to pay for fair and good fucntional products, otherwise they would have bought a way cheaper machines.
Evaluate the number of licenses compared to the sold machines, and do the math.

The new software will include a new surveilance station,


I wander what road Synology plans on the webcam part, especially after expanding with Y-cam.
http://www.tweaktown.com/pressrelease/1 ... index.html

lets just all hope Synology chooses wisely...

[trinode]

Are synology using a third party product in order to support cameras? if so, then this license fee may well reflect their own costs. If not, then I'm struggling to understand the need to charge for the licenses, as they should have it so you need a better syno for more cameras, which makes sense as more cameras require more processing power...

[psweber]

I have been studying NAS units for a long time and this is by far the most versatile unit however the licensing of the camera pack baffles me too. It's like you want to sneak in then... oh by the way if you want to fully use the machine pay us... we gotchya! Bad business! Licence fees are always bogus and just a way to make vacation money! If you guys don't want to pay then bypass them and install zoneminder. It is free and can be found at their website. It does all you want. After all all this unit is, is a pre-configures linux box.

[introid]

Personnaly, I'm looking for a good NAS for multiple application, like 1010+ or the last 1511+, the video surveillance is an important point for me, but I feel the price extremely high, so it is why I'm looking if competitor will not include such program/feature for free.

You must know that compagnies likes Milestone have today a Xprotect including 8 licences for free...

Perhaps we should this to use such solution with virtualisation, I don't know if it could work, but really, it's is already not easy to afford for a big NAS, licence cost is really to high

"XProtect™ Go
XProtect Go is a completely free version of our market leading XProtect IP video management software.

It supports 8 cameras, one user, stores video recordings for 5 days and lets you export video in AVI format.

IP video surveillance starts here!
"
I'm not putting the direct link because I don't know if it is allowed

[Tweakit]

Good to know I am far from alone in my frustration concerning surveillance station. I had been running a Netgear NAS for some two years before switching to a Synology 1010+ at the end of last year. Indeed, the offered camera support seemed to make all the difference. Or so I thought.

Even with the most dubious suppliers on eBay, it would cost a fortune to get a fair number of cameras supported. Approx $35 per license is the cheapest I could find, and having some 5 camera's (costing me a fortune as well, btw) this would set me back $175 just to use what I expected to have already.

Even worse is that the particular product (surveillance station) doesn't even live up to its claims anyway. Camera support is severely lacking, so thank you indeed Synology, for a "free" first license to establish just that. If you decide to charge me, make sure your product is flawless first and offer some decent support for it. If I need to back up my claims, check my other posts concerning ONVIF. Or try to configure an Ovislink Airlive OD-600HD or OD-325HD. Oh sure, they're supported, but don't expect to be able to use the high-resolution modes for which you paid top-dollar...

At this price, I wonder if anyone in their right mind is even interested in the crappy surveillance software. Why not offer a decent package of zoneminder like mentioned earlier in this thread? What commercial gain is kept in the dark here?

Truthfully, I wouldn't even mind having to pay for feature-rich, sophisticated software. But really, just have a glance at what is available on the market (e.g. http://www.onssi.com/ or whatever) and be amazed what camera support, surveillance management and video analysis really IS about.

In the end, it's all about expectations. My old Netgear can't do half of what the Synology 1010+ features, yet I have always been very satisfied with the machine (actually, still am) and support had been great. I'm very, very disappointed with Synology and even somewhat regret having bought one instead of another Netgear or QNAP.

[Tweakit]

@introid -
Thanks for the reference to XProtect Go! In a lighter setup, like mine with some 5 camera's, this might do the trick perfectly. I'll have a look into this.

Saving €175 on hot air (licenses), I might even consider throwing another computing brick in my network. Perhaps an Atom based low power unit to run this. Too bad for my environmental considerations (partly why I consolidated to 1010+), but the Synology Surveillance Station "license lock-in" is truly unacceptable. Way to go Synology (yeah, keep shouting there's no camera-vendor lock-in anymore).

[Tweakit]

Come to think of it, there little mention here on the cheapest alternative: Using the native interface of the IP-camera.

Because Synology fails to meet my requirements and continues to do so, I currently have a work-around to get my set-up to work. Any thoughts on improvements are appreciated.

On a main webpage (running on the 1010+, which admittedly works great):
- Link to the URL of the various camera's
- make sure the camera's use a unique port for web-access (eg. 8080, 8081, 8082, etc)
- open the ports on your router/firewall and refer to the required camera (url:port)
- Use the built-in authentication for security (multi-level for the models I use).

This gives a basic form of central management for live view and control over the camera's. The models I use support SAMBA, so for storage I merely need a shared folder. I have a D-link model with built-in SD storage as well, offering another alternative (I don't use this).
Thru the standard Synology file-access interface you can access the (video-)files that the camera's put on the share(s). So there's a crude form of remote viewing as well.

Since Surveillance Station adds little functionality, yet hinders lots of the native camera features, this is the setup that currently works for me. Oh, and I don't get to spend loads of money on licenses, tough luck. Instead I bought slighty more expensive camera's and have all the freedom I want (and need).

[Austin-S]

I’m very angry about this. It’s advertised as being allowed to have up to a certain number of cameras but nowhere on Newegg where I bought this did it state that you had to buy licenses for more than one camera (or it was not obvious, super fine print that hides the truth is just going to piss me off). This was a key feature I wanted and it would not have been as big of a deal if it wasn’t so deceptively done. This is my first NAS experience and I don’t think I’m going to recommend it to anyone especial Synology since they feel the need to nickel and dime their customers for feature that they seeming advertised as included.

I finally found out about this when trying to install my second IP camera. Extremely angry I have to add $60 that I was not expecting. Might have been a different story if this information was up front. Because of this I will not purchase another product from a company that uses such deceptive marketing and will warn anyone interest in a NAS about this. If I didn’t spend so much time getting it up and running I would think of returning because of how angry this practice makes me feel.

I joined just to vent my frustration with this since I just was made aware of this while trying to install the camera!

[maxxfi]

When you installed your first camera, did you go through the User's Manual?
In the chapter about Surveillance Station there is paragraph "About camera license":

where the limitation is clearly readable.