Arlo Smart CVR plan with an Ultra 2 camera

[pwaggs]

I have been registered for a CVR plan for about three days now and here are my initial thoughts.

1. It works ok. Certainly nice to be able to see what happens around trigger events.

2. Why is it not 4k? I am paying for 4k streaming but when I go to CVR, it is not 4K.

3. On the mobile, I cannot change screen size. I am stuck with non optimized tiny screen so that Arlo can display the timeline below.

4. I cannot change the viewing speed. So I cannot rewind to a period of the day and watch the footage at 2X or 5X or anything other than real time.

5. Whenever I return to "Live" the entire process times out and crashes. I have to exit from the device and return to the main screen and reselect. It will then work. But as soon as I enter timeline, all bets are off for live viewing.

As it is right now, relatively half baked, CVR is simply not worth the full cost. It should really be about half priced until Arlo figures out how to make it easier to use and more useful. Even if it simply worked and allowed me to view at different speeds without crashing the program, that would be a huge step forward.

You can also access it on your PC, but then you know that you have to go through the whole 2FA SMS nonsense (Why can I not use my google authenticator to do 2FA and then tell the silly program to accept my browser for thirty days or whatever?)

Anyway, so far I am liking Arlo, but cannot believe how not robust their interface is. The cameras seem fine, but the software/interface needs a lot of work.

[pwaggs]

Big question here aside from my earlier comments.

How do I capture or download a segment of CVR footage? IOW if I have a five minute segment from three days ago that I would like to isolate and download, how do I do that? 

Can I get that segment in 4K? I still find it funny that I pay for a 4K plan, I can watch live at 4K, triggered events record at 4K, but CVR footage is at some resolution a major step down from 4K.

A couple of follow ups from my previous post.

The CVR functionality crashes far less on my Android phone now. Maybe there has been an update. But it has gone from annoyingly often to only occasionally. Also I figured out that the video image will resize and fill the entire screen in portrait mode if you select the full screen arrow on the upper right corner. It does a weird thing where it will leave title artifacts on the screen from the timeline but it will in fact rotate, so I felt like I need to clarify that coment.

[StephenB]

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@pwaggs wrote:

How do I capture or download a segment of CVR footage? IOW if I have a five minute segment from three days ago that I would like to isolate and download, how do I do that? 

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I think all you can do is play back the segment while recording the screen.

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@pwaggs wrote:

Can I get that segment in 4K? I still find it funny that I pay for a 4K plan, I can watch live at 4K, triggered events record at 4K, but CVR footage is at some resolution a major step down from 4K.

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CVR is only 1080p (which I agree is strange when coupled with a 4K camera/4K plan).

[pwaggs]

CVR as currently configured is not worth it as an additional package and should simply be included in the basic package. you need the ability to adjust playback speed, record at 4K (if your plan is 4K), and export captured/gated segments as defined by the user, in order for the system to approach value added.

I'll wrap up my experimenting with functionality (It is pretty mediocre actually. The resizing of the picture introduced lots of text box artifacts which overlays your viewing area rendering it moot.) and then after my review, without significant changes by Arlo, I'll unsubscribe from the CVR.

Ultimately, if it is a bandwidth issue, there should be an ability to do this processing in the local storage of the smarthub. Put in a large capacity microSD and record there on a loop for whatever days the capacity allows.