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Have you had vandalism or a burglary in your neighborhood recently? Maybe you should install a home surveillance system. Police are increasingly using these systems to capture criminals. Costco warehouses are selling the the Astak CM-818DVR4V (Costco Item #277301, priced at $489.99 in July 2008). Costco occasionally has a $100 coupon on this item.

This item features four cameras and a four channel digital video recorder. The digital video recorder works like a TIVO, allowing you to store the video from the four surveillance cameras on a hard disk, and then instantly review the video at a specified time. The digital video recorder comes with a 250 GB disk, which should be enough to store several days worth of video from the four cameras. The exact amount of storage depends upon the compression rate and the number of frames per second you choose to store.

It has many features. You can also hook this up to your home network and remotely monitor the cameras over the internet. It has a USB port for data backup. The cameras can be mounted outdoor, and they have infrared LEDs for night vision. (You can see in the dark, but the criminal won't know it.) Each camera comes with 100 feet of cable, so you are going to need to do some installation, drilling through walls, and hiding some cable.

If you buy this, the first thing to do is update the firmware. See the product page at Astek.com to download the updated firmware.

For comparison, the same system is available at Walmart.com for $550, that's $60 more.

If you are interested in home surveillance, you should also consider looking at this Q-See 4 camera system available at Costco.com for $299, (Costco Item number 240155, Model Q25DVR4ES). It seems to be a closeout, available while supplies last. (I previously reviewed a Q-See video baby monitor.)