Your NVR or DVR Can Finally Join Silarius Cloud

If you already own a network video recorder or a digital video recorder, you've probably assumed the footage stayed stuck on-site: watch it from the box, or lose it the moment the box fails, floods, or walks out the door. That assumption is now out of date. An existing NVR or DVR can connect to Silarius Cloud, camera by camera, through the Silarius Gateway. (Shopping for a new recorder instead of connecting an old one? Our NVR buying guide covers how to size one.)

How a recorder actually gets into the cloud

A recorder doesn't join Silarius Cloud as one device. Each camera attached to it is added on its own, one at a time, through the Gateway. An eight-camera recorder becomes eight separate entries in Silarius Cloud, each with its own registration code. A single Gateway holds up to 50 of these entries, recorder channels included, alongside any IP cameras connected to it directly.

Before any of that works, the recorder has to be told to cooperate: turn on ONVIF, and ideally RTSP as well, in its network or security settings. On an analog system, that setting lives on the DVR rather than on the camera, since the DVR is what talks to the Gateway. Some recorders also need their RTSP sign-in switched to Digest or Basic before video shows up at all. Once that's sorted, each channel registers the same way a direct IP camera would.

What to expect from the smart features

Recording and remote viewing work the same whether a camera connects directly or through a recorder. Smart detection is the exception. Features like recognizing people and vehicles rely on event data coming off the camera itself, and plenty of recorders never pass that data through. Expect plain video, not smart alerts, from cameras sitting behind a recorder. Full smart analytics are reserved for cameras connected straight to a Gateway, or for the newer Silarius X cameras, which skip the Gateway entirely and talk to the cloud on their own.

What it costs to bring an old recorder along

The Gateway itself is a one-time purchase, not a subscription: $299.99, covering up to 50 cameras including recorder channels. From there, every camera, whether it reaches the cloud directly or through a recorder, goes on a Silarius Cloud plan priced by the quality and retention chosen for it: Mobile at 720p, Pro at 1080p, or 4MP, with per-camera plans starting at $6.99 per camera, per month, and retention running anywhere from a few days up to a year on standard plans, or up to three years on a custom plan.

That's a real change for anyone who assumed an aging recorder meant a choice between replacing every camera or staying offline. Footage that used to vanish the moment a box was stolen, fried in a storm, or simply full now has a copy sitting in redundant, scalable cloud infrastructure, with a private cloud option available for larger, multi-site operations, while the recorder keeps doing its on-site job. Cameras and Gateways reach that infrastructure without opening a single port on your router, connecting out over an encrypted tunnel instead.

Worth checking before you start

Not every recorder behaves the same once ONVIF or RTSP is switched on. Our step-by-step guide to connecting an NVR or DVR walks through the recorder-side settings before you touch the Gateway, which saves a round trip if yours turns out to be the fussier kind.

If you're not sure whether your current mix of recorder and cameras is even the right one to build on, run it through the Silarius Site Planner first. It places cameras on satellite imagery of your actual property, or a floor plan for indoor areas, picks the right camera for each distance, checks whether cable already exists at each position, and sizes the Gateway, switch, and Cloud plan around the hardware you already have rather than a clean-slate build.

Ready to see what your existing hardware is worth in the cloud? Silarius Cloud has the current plans and Gateway pricing, so you can check the real cost of bringing your recorder along before committing to anything.