The Mitsubishi DX-TL5000 DVR Test, text and photos by Vlado Damjanovski 2006 In this issue of CCTV focus Test Drive we analyse the latest Mitsubishi 16-channel DVR. Sam Boustani, sales representative for Digital Video Recorders at Mitsubishi was kind enough to ship us one of the new models of Mitsubishi s latest DVRs for our test drive article. The model is DX-TL5000, which is a 16 looping-channel DVR that runs on a hardware-embedded Operating System. Mitsubishi Electric is known in CCTV circles as one of the first companies that introduced the famous Time Lapse VCR concept over two decades ago. In fact, the Time Lapse recording concept used in CCTV is Mitsubishi s invention. Times have changed and not many VCRs are used these days in CCTV. The compression used on DX-TL5000 is the new and standardised wavelet type of compression compliant with the JPEG-2000 recommendations. Mitsubishi highlights that JPEG-2000 is more advanced than the original wavelet, offering higher picture quality, improved data error correction and an interesting feature of motion detection during Although there are smaller models (the 9-channel DX-TL950, and the 16-channel DX-TL2500) the all new DX-TL5000 is one of Mitsubishi s attempts to enter the new digital recording market with a serious unit. The DX-TL5000 is a 4 RU in height with dimensions 425 x 390 x 185 mm, weighing over 13 kg. The DVR can be completely controlled by a USB mouse and the video outputs are shown on 2 CVBS monitors, one Y/C and an optional XGA computer screen. This DVR can also be connected on a LAN or WAN network and images can be viewed or played back that way too. The TW2804 - A/D chips 20 issue 35-2006
An actual exported test pattern in super mode playback. I think that the Mitsubishi engineers have made a very wise decision in choosing such an image compression, so that all the advantages of using image compression rather than video compression, are utilised. Importantly, this DVR uses hardware compression JPEG-2000 chips. The specific type of chips are Analog Devices ADV202, the same that we reviewed in issue 30 of "CCTV focus" back in 2004. These are extremely powerful and high quality JPEG2000 chips and it is of no surprise that the images look so good. There are six compression levels used in the DX- TL5000: long, basic, standard, high, fine and super. The field image size is as per ITU-601 recommendations, 720x288 pixels, and when frame mode is used it makes a full PAL frame of 720x576 pixels. When the lowest compression super (best image quality) is used in frame mode, the DX-TL5000 produce images which are very close to the real uncompressed quality. Not many DVRs that I have tested come as close as this. This was confirmed with the CCTV Labs TPG-8 test The DX-TL5000 comes complete with documentation pattern generator. Images can be seen reproduced above. Admittedly, such clarity can only be seen on a good quality, high resolution CRT composite monitor, which is typical for most of the high quality DVRs that work with composite video signal cameras. The same image when displayed on the optional XGA monitor output is not as impressive. This should be quite understandable since any computer video card that converts PAL video to computer XGA format The inside guts of DX-TL5000 The back panel issue 35-2006 21
Nice air tunnelling and protection loses a little bit of that interlaced magic, and if the XGA monitor is of an LCD type (as most of them are these days) the quality loss compared to composite output is even more obvious. The moral is, if you intend to invest in a machine like this, consider using high resolution CRT interlaced monitor for best image quality. A key advantage of the JPEG2000 image compression is that it allows for smooth transition of images in either playback direction. Smooth, continuous video playback is available not only in forward but reverse direction, important when searching for a particular event. Furthermore, event searches are facilitated by several key functions; including bookmark searching, date/time searches, motion detection searches and alarm-triggered event searches. Up to 8 bookmarked events can be stored by the DX-TL5000 for later review. The two composite BNC outputs of the DX-TL5000 allow use of two separate monitors, thus creating a powerful camera-monitoring setup with double splitscreen capability. Live video and playback footage can be output separately to the two monitors. Alternatively, the output from a single camera can be displayed on both monitors but with a time shift - useful if you need to check many hours of video. The mechanical design of the DVR is shown in the photos here. Removal of the 3 SATA drives is very easy in case of failure This is a self contained unit with a built-in DVD burner and three hard disk drives slotted in the lower part of the DVR. All disk drives are of the Serial ATA type and they are easily pulled out in case of a failure (this is shown in the photos). The interesting but important part of the Mitsubishi design is that even though all three drives are in the separated lower 22 issue 35-2006
This is how the FSMPlayerLite looks like deck of the DVR which can be opened from the front of the machine - there are dedicated cooling fans with variable speed for this section where the hard drives are located (in addition to the main fan). The hard drives of the machine supplied for this test drive were Hitachi s Deskstar 250 GB each, Serial ATA type. So, the machine s total capacity in our case was 750 GB. The advantage of using SATA is faster data transfer, smaller cables, better hard disk firmware and easier replacement should a drive fail. When exporting footage on the built-in DVD burner, the DX-TL5000 automatically inserts a small executable player FSMPlayerLite (around 1.1 MB in size) which can be used to play the JPEG-2000 images. The important part is that this is an executable program, which means it can be played off the DVD/ CD by double-clicking on it, without the need to be installed on a third party PC. This is very important for larger organisations and government agencies, police, security and IT centres where installing any program on their dedicated computers without prior approval and checking is not permitted. On the back side of the DX-TL5000 there are BNCs for 16 camera inputs and also looping BNCs for the same. There are two BNCs for composite video outputs, one for Y/C (S-VHS) and an optional computer XGA screen output. Interestingly enough, when you have more than 16 cameras, two or more machines can be connected in cascading configuration, where video output of one machine can be made available to another machine using the two Cascading BNCs. This way it is possible to have any camera from any DVR displayed on a monitor that is physically connected to a different box. There are also 4 serial bus ports at the back and 2 at the front, plenty for most devices and users; two separate RJ-45 LAN sockets, one for connecting to the DVR from a web-browser for live monitoring or playback and the other for network storage. The above are screen shots from the webbrowser client available on the DX-TL5000 issue 35-2006 23
Various screen shots from the complete management software package DX-PC55 26 issue 35-2006
As you would expect from experienced CCTV designers, the Mitsubishi engineers have also placed at the back of the unit, terminals for RS-485/422 PTZ camera driving, as well as alarm input and output terminals, one for each camera channel. Time synchronisation terminals are also available, like in the old days of VCR and multiplexers - in case multiple DVRs are used. At the front panel, the most obvious and useful tool for playing back is the built-in jog-shuttle on the front right-hand side. This has two main round knobs, the outer one used for fast forward and reverse direction playback, while the inner one is used for searching in both directions and pausing when released. Once you become accustomed to it the jog-shuttle is very quick for finding events during playback. Selecting split screen modes or extracting particular cameras from the multiplexed recording is done reasonably easily using the keypad to the right of the jog-shuttle for camera selection and the buttons below it for split screen play-back selection. The same keypad can be used when searching for a particular moment in time, although using a mouse for that is also possible and may be more logical, but it is more time consuming as each digit is entered by clicking with the mouse over the appropriate digit. The above described control is applied when controlling a DVR directly, using a mouse. I found that in many installations and especially when more than one DVR is used, a much more practical and complete control is applied via client software over the network. Using a web browser to communicate with the DX-TL5000 is as easy as entering an IP address, login name and password. Admittedly, on my first attempt it did not work out because I used Firefox, but the Internet Explorer worked fine. Screen shot images of what functions are possible using this web-browser control are shown on these pages. But with the Mitsubishi s DVRs not only is a web-browser control available (which like most browser controllers are reasonably limited in what they can do) but there is also dedicated client software called DX-PC55E. The DVR soft replica in the DX-PC55 software Photos from some of the menus available on the composite monitor outputs (mouse-controlled) issue 35-2006 27
This is a pretty complete application which offers many of the settings to be inserted using a logical GUI, and in general I find it more intuitive than the web-browser application. The actual front DVR panel graphical replica that is available in the DX-PC55E package can be used for easy control and it is also a very attractive design. So, once an operator learns how to use the DVR with its buttons, they could then use the GUI replica just as easily. The DX-PC55 allows direct connection to multiple Mitsubishi DVRs at once and they can be a mixture of any Mitsubishi DVR model. The users can select different cameras from each DVR to be displayed at the same time. Furthermore, using this control the actual monitors connected to the DX-TL5000 can also be controlled, thus allowing for system designs where composite (or Y/C) monitor outputs can be fed back to the DX- PC55E client for seamless control. This might be even more attractive when multiple cascaded DVRs are connected (up to a total of 16, allowing for systems with up to 256 cameras to be included in such a design). The physical appearance of the DX-PC55E is shown at pages 26 and 27, giving you a glimpse of its powerful capabilities including the PTZ control. The DX-TL5000 has a very unique method of setting up the recording mode. There is a fully automated method, where the machine chooses the compression level and pictures per second based on your request (setting) for the recording duration. If desired, you could go to fully manual setting and choose individual camera parameters. These settings, as well as choosing a field or frame recording mode, can only be set when the recording is stopped. Normal recording allows fine-tuning to 6 levels of quality in addition to adjusting field/frame rates for individual cameras. Normal recording modes are also independent of alarm recording. Alarm recording is divided into two modes of alarm recording - standard alarm recording and emergency alarm recording. The standard alarm recording may be triggered by an external alarm, but also the internal inbuilt motion detection function. The motion detection has a 22 x 23 matrix setting and allows the user to set 5 levels of movement sensitivity plus two individual settings per camera. This allows the user to compensate for night and day recording as well as adjust for camera quality or frequency of movement. There is an interesting long pre-alarm recording in the DX-TL5000 s design, with 1 second up to 60 minutes of pre-alarm recording available. Recording settings in this instance may be set individually and independently for each channel, allowing alarm recording to take precedence over normal recording. The alarm recording modes may be configured to report to operators via email. Up to 5 email addresses can be accommodated. 28 issue 35-2006
The Mitsubishi DX-TL5000 Specifications sheet Test Drive Alarm recording data is stored as a protected partition on the hard drive ensuring data integrity. This partition size is user-configurable. To further increase recording reliability, the DX-TL5000 offers an array of active mirror recording modes. Data may be mirrored on the internal hard drive array or extended to external storage through the USB connection. Mirror recording modes offered include full mirroring or partial mirroring, whereby data from the internal hard drives may be copied across different external hard drives. Mirror recording on the DX-TL5000 closely replicates the functionality of RAID-based devices, without the associated complexity and disadvantages. Unlike the small and unknown DVR manufacturers popping up everywhere in Korea, China and Taiwan, I expect that long term support, spare parts and updates would be readily available for the DX- TL5000 as it is entirely designed and manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric. I am told that the DX-TL5000 carries a three-year warranty, another important assurance for Mitsubishi's new customers. As a general conclusion, I can say that this is a very well made and promising DVR, delivering high quality images in full PAL format, which is one of the most important features for many users. The machine seems to be very stable and it never failed to power up after many abrupt powering shut-downs I performed, usually taking just a bit over 2 minutes. Its embedded Linux OS is not affected by a possible failure of a hard drive as it runs from a chip, which is an important design concept. The one thing that takes a bit more time than what I have seen on some other DVRs is the time and date search for recording, making it a bit slower in that department. I guess all that it requires is a bit of practice and getting used to. If the jog-shuttle is used however, this operation can be sped up considerably. More practical and much quicker are searches using the VMD detected object, alarms and reviews made using Bookmarks. Other interesting features include the possibility of connecting two keyboards (KB5) to a TL5000, allowing two security guards to be independently controlling the recorder using the separate monitor outputs A and B. Up to 10 users can be logged onto the TL5000 using the web server and 5 users using DX-PC55E software (3 of which can be playing back footage in addition to the two users directly on the DVR). The recorder is quoted to record 200 p/s at any resolution and play back at 100 p/s. The DX-TL5000 is a very complete machine from both a hardware and software point of view (no extra costs for the web-browser and the client software), and would be ideal for any small to medium sized CCTV system. For further information visit Mitsubishi's web site http://www.mitsubishielectric.com.au. [ ] issue 35-2006 29