Buying a LaView NVR and expecting any support from LaView is a mistake.
If you have a LaView NVR and a Mac, you are probably just a little frustrated. I’ll try and help as much as I can but, there isn’t much to work with here.
To begin with if you try and use the LaView website, which is horrible, they tell you to use the wrong app with your NVR. I ended up trying all of them and finally got one to work. It was the one for the DVR? I have an LV-9808C8E NVR with 4 day night HD cameras. The LaView is just one piece of my home automation and security system.
I originally purchased LaView because it was cheaper than most other brands. Sure there are a ton of no-names out there, but I don’t want a camera system built into my home or business that is useless after a year. Costco is hit or miss and I wanted an NVR.
LaView is made by a company that makes a lot of DVR’s and NVR’s. Oddly they can’t make the software to run these systems. Other companies buy the boxes, slap their names on them and off you go. The problem with these little companies is that their software only works with the models they bought and there isn’t a cross reference. I figured this out by using the IP scanner on my home network to see who made the network card.
With an NVR you should be able to manage the entire thing remotely. After all it is a “Network Video Recorder”. Not so with this one. For some reason they can’t get a web browser to work. My 12 year old Q-See system at one of my offices still works perfectly.
Sadly with a recent update to Apples OS for Mac systems, the NVR7000 client for Mac’s that is still on the LaView website is worthless. The LaView Net software works fine with some tweaking on my iPhone. Oddly the LaView website says to download the LaView Patrol app for this model. The Patrol app didn’t work.
There is also an issue if you have any other “cloud” based access to your home systems. If you have a home hard drive, door camera or other device you can access over the internet, you might already be blocking port 80.
I spoofed the system by adding a 1 to ports 80 and 8000. My router has a table that forwards port 80 to my home server so I can access documents from anywhere. Port 81 is now the LaView NVR Camera Server. This is a helpful trick if you have more than one smart device at home that you want to access without a DDNS service.
Be careful though, you don’t know what else might use those ports.
The bottom line is that the LaView products are a great idea at a good price with absolutely horrible support. Sadly I am now going to buy another NVR for my home. The good thing is another long term brand now has an apple TV app so I can switch fairly quickly to the cameras from any TV in the house.
Would I buy LaView again – no. Would I recommend it to my friends – no.