Appletell reviews the Vue Personal Video Network

Provides: Video surveillance
Developer: Vue
Minimum Requirements: Constant Internet connection, router, Mac/PC or iPhone with Internet access
Price: $299, $99 for each additional camera
Availability: Now

Worried about Rex at home all by his little self? Or maybe you’re just paranoid that your neighbors like your stuff a little too much? No matter what your motives, if you want to keep an eye on what’s happening around your home, the Vue Personal Video Network is one option that gives you access to streaming video feeds from around your house via a computer or even an iPhone.

The Vue Personal Video Network comes packaged with everything you need to get started: two cameras and the base station to which they connect. Extra cameras are $100 each (ouch). Setup is simple. Just connect the base station to your router (sorry, the cameras are wireless, but the base needs ethernet), and then plug in the power. Then, just bring each camera within 10 or so inches of the base station and push the sync button. That’s it. Well, there’s some Internet registration, but it’s still pretty simple. Even grandma could do this. No geeks required.

Now, you can place those two cameras pretty much anywhere you want. I have a two story apartment, and I didn’t find any dead spots on the inside of my place. Your range may vary, but I wouldn’t worry about range being an issue. Now, where to put these guys? Thankfully, the mounting bases are very nice. They are half spheres of metal that can be attached to just about any flat surface with the included adhesive strip= or a screw. Then, the camera holds on to this base with the power of magnets! This allows you to move the camera around easily for optimal viewing angles. It also allows you to easily move the cameras from one base to another. There are four included, so they expect you to move these around.

You have two choices of how to make use of your video feeds. You can login via the VueZone site or my preferred method, the iPhone app. While I feel the website gives better image quality (I’m guessing this is just perception), I still prefer the iPhone app. This is because these are mainly security cameras, and you want to be able to access their video feeds easily, anywhere. The iPhone gives you that ability. You can literally check on your home from anywhere you have internet access, even the other side of the planet.

The whole system works fairly well, meaning you can get your video feed with little effort. The iPhone app is a little bare bones, but what more do you really need than to view the slightly-off-live video feed? You save that feed as a video or take snapshots. But I’m not trying to say the video quality is good, because it isn’t. You can change the exposure on these to compensate for low to high levels of light, but you really want to be looking at something relatively well lit. If you have enough light, the image quality is okay at best, but movement is sporadic, and streaming is never in real time, or even at an regular pace. I think the video quality is low on this system for two reasons: first, to conserve batteries (which are pesky little camera batteries that are supposed to last about one year), and second, to allow the cameras to be small and light enough to place nearly everywhere. It’s a tradeoff for sure. Is it the tradeoff you’d make? I’d have to say no. While these are small, they aren’t small enough to be unnoticeable without skilled placement. And the video quality is too low to really tell anything more than whether an intruder is present.

This system could benefit from some sort of detection notifications. Perhaps the system could text you anytime there is significant movement on one of the cameras, but this would likely kill the batteries as these cameras would have to be streaming video 24/7, which they aren’t. They only stream when you ask them too. You can’t even view more than one live feed at a time; not sure why this is the case.

I think the next version of this product could really shine if it includes decent video quality, a lowered price, and extra features. I love the easy setup process and that you can access this from your iPhone. But at nearly $300 for only 2 cameras, it’s just too expensive to justify its usefulness given the video quality and lack of extra features. Pus, extra cameras cost $100, a bit excessive. I think this product would have a much better chance at a substantially lower price point.

Appletell Rating:

Buy Vue Personal Video Network